The Kite Runner PDF

THE KITE
RUNNER

by KHALED HOSSEINI

Published 2003

-December 2001_

I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the
winter of 1975.1 remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling
mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago,
but it's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury
it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been
peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.

One day last summer, my friend Rahim Khan called from Pakistan. He
asked me to come see him. Standing in the kitchen with the receiver to my ear, I
knew it wasn't just Rahim Khan on the line. It was my past of unatoned** sins.
After I hung up, I went for a walk along Spreckels Lake on the northern edge of
Golden Gate Park. The early-afternoon sun sparkled on the water where dozens
of miniature boats sailed, propelled by a crisp breeze. Then I glanced up and saw
a pair of kites, red with long blue tails, soaring in the sky. They danced high
above the trees on the west end of the park, over the windmills, floating side by
side like a pair of eyes looking down on San Francisco, the city I now call home.
And suddenly Hassan's voice whispered in my head: _For you, a thousand times
over._ Hassan the harelipped kite runner.

I sat on a park bench near a willow tree. I thought about something Rahim
Khan said just before he hung up, almost as an after thought. -There is a way to
be good again.-1 looked up at those twin kites. I thought about Hassan. Thought
about Baba. Ali. Kabul. I thought of the life I had lived until the winter of 1975
came and changed everything. And made me what I am today.

TWO

When we were children, Hassan and I used to climb the poplar trees in the
driveway of my father's house and annoy our neighbors by reflecting sunlight
into their homes with a shard of mirror. We would sit across from each other on
a pair of high branches, our naked feet dangling, our trouser pockets filled with

dried mulberries and walnuts. We took turns with the mirror as we ate
mulberries, pelted each other with them, giggling, laughing; I can still see Hassan
up on that tree, sunlight flickering through the leaves on his almost perfectly
round face, a face like a Chinese doll chiseled from hardwood: his flat, broad nose
and slanting, narrow eyes like bamboo leaves, eyes that looked, depending on
the light, gold, green, even sapphire I can still see his tiny low-set ears and that
pointed stub of a chin, a meaty appendage that looked like it was added as a
mere afterthought. And the cleft lip, just left of midline, where the Chinese doll
maker's instrument may have slipped; or perhaps he had simply grown tired and
careless.

Sometimes, up in those trees, I talked Hassan into firing walnuts with his
slingshot at the neighbor's one-eyed German shepherd. Hassan never wanted to,
but if I asked, _really_ asked, he wouldn't deny me. Hassan never denied me
anything. And he was deadly with his slingshot. Hassan's father, Ali, used to catch
us and get mad, or as mad as someone as gentle as Ali could ever get. He would
wag his finger and wave us down from the tree. He would take the mirror and
tell us what his mother had told him, that the devil shone mirrors too, shone
them to distract Muslims during prayer. "And he laughs while he does it," he
always added, scowling at his son.

"Yes, Father," Hassan would mumble, looking down at his feet. But he
never told on me. Never told that the mirror, like shooting walnuts at the
neighbor's dog, was always my idea.

The poplar trees lined the redbrick driveway, which led to a pair of
wrought-iron gates. They in turn opened into an extension of the driveway into
my father's estate. The house sat on the left side of the brick path, the backyard
at the end of it.

Everyone agreed that my father, my Baba, had built the most beautiful
house in the Wazir Akbar Khan district, a new and affluent neighborhood in the
northern part of Kabul. Some thought it was the prettiest house in all of Kabul. A
broad entryway flanked by rosebushes led to the sprawling house of marble
floors and wide windows. Intricate mosaic tiles, handpicked by Baba in Isfahan,
covered the floors of the four bathrooms. Gold-stitched tapestries, which Baba
had bought in Calcutta, lined the walls; a crystal chandelier hung from the
vaulted ceiling.

Upstairs was my bedroom, Baba's room, and his study, also known as "the
smoking room," which perpetually smelled of tobacco and cinnamon. Baba and
his friends reclined on black leather chairs there after Ali had served dinner.

They stuffed their pipes--except Baba always called it "fattening the pipe"--and
discussed their favorite three topics: politics, business, soccer. Sometimes I
asked Baba if I could sit with them, but Baba would stand in the doorway. "Go on,
now," he'd say. "This is grown-ups' time. Why don't you go read one of those
books of yours?" He'd close the door, leave me to wonder why it was always
grown-ups' time with him. I'd sit by the door, knees drawn to my chest.
Sometimes I sat there for an hour, sometimes two, listening to their laughter,
their chatter.

The living room downstairs had a curved wall with custom built cabinets.
Inside sat framed family pictures: an old, grainy photo of my grandfather and
King Nadir Shah taken in 1931, two years before the king's assassination; they
are standing over a dead deer, dressed in knee-high boots, rifles slung over their
shoulders. There was a picture of my parents' wedding night, Baba dashing in his
black suit and my mother a smiling young princess in white. Here was Baba and
his best friend and business partner, Rahim Khan, standing outside our house,
neither one smiling-I am a baby in that photograph and Baba is holding me,
looking tired and grim. I'm in his arms, but it's Rahim Khan's pinky my fingers
are curled around.

The curved wall led into the dining room, at the center of which was a
mahogany table that could easily sit thirty guests-and, given my father's taste
for extravagant parties, it did just that almost every week. On the other end of
the dining room was a tall marble fireplace, always lit by the orange glow of a fire
in the wintertime.

A large sliding glass door opened into a semicircular terrace that
overlooked two acres of backyard and rows of cherry trees. Baba and Ali had
planted a small vegetable garden along the eastern wall: tomatoes, mint,
peppers, and a row of corn that never really took. Hassan and I used to call it "the
Wall of Ailing Corn."

On the south end of the garden, in the shadows of a loquat tree, was the
servants' home, a modest little mud hut where Hassan lived with his father.

It was there, in that little shack, that Hassan was born in the winter of
1964, just one year after my mother died giving birth to me.

In the eighteen years that I lived in that house, I stepped into Hassan and
Ali's quarters only a handful of times. When the sun dropped low behind the hills
and we were done playing for the day, Hassan and I parted ways. I went past the

rosebushes to Baba's mansion, Hassan to the mud shack where he had been
born, where he'd lived his entire life. I remember it was spare, clean, dimly lit by
a pair of kerosene lamps. There were two mattresses on opposite sides of the
room, a worn Herati rug with frayed edges in between, a three-legged stool, and
a wooden table in the corner where Hassan did his drawings. The walls stood
bare, save for a single tapestry with sewn-in beads forming the words _Allah-u-
akbar_. Baba had bought it for Ali on one of his trips to Mashad.

It was in that small shack that Hassan's mother, Sanaubar, gave birth to
him one cold winter day in 1964. While my mother hemorrhaged to death during
childbirth, Hassan lost his less than a week after he was born. Lost her to a fate
most Afghans considered far worse than death: She ran off with a clan of
traveling singers and dancers.

Hassan never talked about his mother, as if she'd never existed. I always
wondered if he dreamed about her, about what she looked like, where she was. I
wondered if he longed to meet her. Did he ache for her, the way I ached for the
mother I had never met? One day, we were walking from my father's house to
Cinema Zainab for a new Iranian movie, taking the shortcut through the military
barracks near Istiqlal Middle School-Baba had forbidden us to take that
shortcut, but he was in Pakistan with Rahim Khan at the time. We hopped the
fence that surrounded the barracks, skipped over a little creek, and broke into
the open dirt field where old, abandoned tanks collected dust. A group of soldiers
huddled in the shade of one of those tanks, smoking cigarettes and playing cards.
One of them saw us, elbowed the guy next to him, and called Hassan.

"Hey, you!" he said. "I know you."

We had never seen him before. He was a squatly man with a shaved head
and black stubble on his face. The way he grinned at us, leered, scared me. "Just
keep walking," 1 muttered to Hassan.

"You! The Hazara! Look at me when I'm talking to you!" the soldier
barked. He handed his cigarette to the guy next to him, made a circle with the
thumb and index finger of one hand. Poked the middle finger of his other hand
through the circle. Poked it in and out. In and out. "I knew your mother, did you
know that? I knew her real good. I took her from behind by that creek over
there."

The soldiers laughed. One of them made a squealing sound. I told Hassan
to keep walking, keep walking.

"What a tight little sugary cunt she had!" the soldier was saying, shaking
hands with the others, grinning. Later, in the dark, after the movie had started, I
heard Hassan next to me, croaking. Tears were sliding down his cheeks. I
reached across my seat, slung my arm around him, pulled him close. He rested
his head on my shoulder. "He took you for someone else," I whispered. "He took
you for someone else."

I'm told no one was really surprised when Sanaubar eloped. People _had_
raised their eyebrows when Ah, a man who had memorized the Koran, married
Sanaubar, a woman nineteen years younger, a beautiful but notoriously
unscrupulous woman who lived up to her dishonorable reputation. Like Ali, she
was a Shi'a Muslim and an ethnic Hazara. She was also his first cousin and
therefore a natural choice for a spouse. But beyond those similarities, Ali and
Sanaubar had little in common, least of all their respective appearances. While
Sanaubar's brilliant green eyes and impish face had, rumor has it, tempted
countless men into sin, Ah had a congenital paralysis of his lower facial muscles,
a condition that rendered him unable to smile and left him perpetually grim¬
faced. It was an odd thing to see the stone-faced Ah happy, or sad, because only
his slanted brown eyes glinted with a smile or welled with sorrow. People say
that eyes are windows to the soul. Never was that more true than with Ah, who
could only reveal himself through his eyes.

I have heard that Sanaubar's suggestive stride and oscillating hips sent
men to reveries of infidelity. But polio had left Ali with a twisted, atrophied right
leg that was sallow skin over bone with little in between except a paper-thin
layer of muscle. I remember one day, when I was eight, Ali was taking me to the
bazaar to buy some _naan_. I was walking behind him, humming, trying to
imitate his walk. I watched him swing his scraggy leg in a sweeping arc, watched
his whole body tilt impossibly to the right every time he planted that foot. It
seemed a minor miracle he didn't tip over with each step. When I tried it, I
almost fell into the gutter. That got me giggling. Ali turned around, caught me
aping him. He didn't say anything. Not then, not ever. He just kept walking.

Ali's face and his walk frightened some of the younger children in the
neighborhood. But the real trouble was with the older kids. They chased him on
the street, and mocked him when he hobbled by. Some had taken to calling him
_Babalu_, or Boogeyman.

"Hey, Babalu, who did you eat today?" they barked to a chorus of laughter.
"Who did you eat, you flat-nosed Babalu?"

They called him "flat-nosed" because of Ali and Hassan's characteristic
Hazara Mongoloid features. For years, that was all I knew about the Hazaras, that
they were Mogul descendants, and that they looked a little like Chinese people.
School text books barely mentioned them and referred to their ancestry only in
passing. Then one day, I was in Baba's study, looking through his stuff, when 1
found one of my mother's old history books. It was written by an Iranian named
Khorami. I blew the dust off it, sneaked it into bed with me that night, and was
stunned to find an entire chapter on Hazara history. An entire chapter dedicated
to Hassan's people! In it, I read that my people, the Pashtuns, had persecuted and
oppressed the Hazaras. It said the Hazaras had tried to rise against the Pashtuns
in the nineteenth century, but the Pashtuns had "quelled them with unspeakable
violence." The book said that my people had killed the Hazaras, driven them from
their lands, burned their homes, and sold their women. The book said part of the
reason Pashtuns had oppressed the Hazaras was that Pashtuns were Sunni
Muslims, while Hazaras were Shi'a. The book said a lot of things I didn't know,
things my teachers hadn't mentioned. Things Baba hadn't mentioned either. It
also said some things I did know, like that people called Hazaras _mice-eating,
flat-nosed, load-carrying donkeys_. I had heard some of the kids in the
neighborhood yell those names to Hassan.

The following week, after class, I showed the book to my teacher and
pointed to the chapter on the Hazaras. He skimmed through a couple of pages,
snickered, handed the book back. "That's the one thing Shi'a people do well," he
said, picking up his papers, "passing themselves as martyrs." He wrinkled his
nose when he said the word Shi'a, like it was some kind of disease.

But despite sharing ethnic heritage and family blood, Sanaubar joined the
neighborhood kids in taunting Ali. I have heard that she made no secret of her
disdain for his appearance.

"This is a husband?" she would sneer. "I have seen old donkeys better
suited to be a husband."

In the end, most people suspected the marriage had been an arrangement
of sorts between Ali and his uncle, Sanaubar's father. They said Ali had married
his cousin to help restore some honor to his uncle's blemished name, even
though Ali, who had been orphaned at the age of five, had no worldly possessions
or inheritance to speak of.

Ali never retaliated against any of his tormentors, I suppose partly
because he could never catch them with that twisted leg dragging behind him.
But mostly because Ali was immune to the insults of his assailants; he had found

his joy, his antidote, the moment Sanaubar had given birth to Hassan. It had been
a simple enough affair. No obstetricians, no anesthesiologists, no fancy
monitoring devices. Just Sanaubar lying on a stained, naked mattress with Ali
and a midwife helping her. She hadn't needed much help at all, because, even in
birth, Hassan was true to his nature: He was incapable of hurting anyone. A few
grunts, a couple of pushes, and out came Hassan. Out he came smiling.

As confided to a neighbor's servant by the garrulous midwife, who had
then in turn told anyone who would listen, Sanaubar had taken one glance at the
baby in Ali's arms, seen the cleft lip, and barked a bitter laughter.

"There," she had said. "Now you have your own idiot child to do all your
smiling for you!" She had refused to even hold Hassan, and just five days later,
she was gone.

Baba hired the same nursing woman who had fed me to nurse Hassan. Ali
told us she was a blue-eyed Hazara woman from Bamiyan, the city of the giant
Buddha statues. "What a sweet singing voice she had," he used to say to us.

What did she sing, Hassan and I always asked, though we already knew-
Ali had told us countless times. We just wanted to hear Ali sing.

He'd clear his throat and begin: _On a high mountain I stood, And cried
the name of Ali, Lion of God 0 Ali, Lion of God, King of Men, Bring joy to our
sorrowful hearts._ Then he would remind us that there was a brotherhood
between people who had fed from the same breast, a kinship that not even time
could break.

Hassan and I fed from the same breasts. We took our first steps on the
same lawn in the same yard. And, under the same roof, we spoke our first words.

Mine was _Baba_.

His was _Amir_. My name.

Looking back on it now, I think the foundation for what happened in the
winter of 1975--and all that followed--was already laid in those first words.

THREE

Lore has it my father once wrestled a black bear in Baluchistan with his bare
hands. If the story had been about anyone else, it would have been dismissed as
_laaf_, that Afghan tendency to exaggerate--sadly, almost a national affliction; if
someone bragged that his son was a doctor, chances were the kid had once
passed a biology test in high school. But no one ever doubted the veracity of any
story about Baba. And if they did, well, Baba did have those three parallel scars
coursing a jagged path down his back. I have imagined Baba's wrestling match
countless times, even dreamed about it. And in those dreams, I can never tell
Baba from the bear.

It was Rahim Khan who first referred to him as what eventually became
Baba's famous nickname, _Toophan agha_, or "Mr. Hurricane." It was an apt
enough nickname. My father was a force of nature, a towering Pashtun specimen
with a thick beard, a wayward crop of curly brown hair as unruly as the man
himself, hands that looked capable of uprooting a willow tree, and a black glare
that would "drop the devil to his knees begging for mercy," as Rahim Khan used
to say. At parties, when all six-foot-five of him thundered into the room, attention
shifted to him like sunflowers turning to the sun.

Baba was impossible to ignore, even in his sleep. I used to bury cotton
wisps in my ears, pull the blanket over my head, and still the sounds of Baba's
snoring-so much like a growling truck engine-penetrated the walls. And my
room was across the hall from Baba's bedroom. How my mother ever managed
to sleep in the same room as him is a mystery to me. It's on the long list of things
I would have asked my mother if I had ever met her.

In the late 1960s, when I was five or six, Baba decided to build an
orphanage. I heard the story through Rahim Khan. He told me Baba had drawn
the blueprints himself despite the fact that he'd had no architectural experience
at all. Skeptics had urged him to stop his foolishness and hire an architect. Of
course, Baba refused, and everyone shook their heads in dismay at his obstinate
ways. Then Baba succeeded and everyone shook their heads in awe at his
triumphant ways. Baba paid for the construction of the two-story orphanage, just
off the main strip of Jadeh Maywand south of the Kabul River, with his own
money. Rahim Khan told me Baba had personally funded the entire project,
paying for the engineers, electricians, plumbers, and laborers, not to mention the
city officials whose "mustaches needed oiling."

It took three years to build the orphanage. I was eight by then. I
remember the day before the orphanage opened, Baba took me to Ghargha Lake,
a few miles north of Kabul. He asked me to fetch Hassan too, but 1 lied and told
him Hassan had the runs. I wanted Baba all to myself. And besides, one time at
Ghargha Lake, Hassan and I were skimming stones and Hassan made his stone
skip eight times. The most I managed was five. Baba was there, watching, and he
patted Hassan on the back. Even put his arm around his shoulder.

We sat at a picnic table on the banks of the lake, just Baba and me, eating
boiled eggs with _kofta_ sandwiches-meatballs and pickles wrapped in _naan_.

The water was a deep blue and sunlight glittered on its looking glass-clear
surface. On Fridays, the lake was bustling with families out for a day in the sun.
But it was midweek and there was only Baba and me, us and a couple of
longhaired, bearded tourists-"hippies," I'd heard them called. They were sitting
on the dock, feet dangling in the water, fishing poles in hand. I asked Baba why
they grew their hair long, but Baba grunted, didn't answer. He was preparing his
speech for the next day, flipping through a havoc of handwritten pages, making
notes here and there with a pencil. I bit into my egg and asked Baba if it was true
what a boy in school had told me, that if you ate a piece of eggshell, you'd have to
pee it out. Baba grunted again.

I took a bite of my sandwich. One of the yellow-haired tourists laughed
and slapped the other one on the back. In the distance, across the lake, a truck
lumbered around a corner on the hill. Sunlight twinkled in its side-view mirror,

"I think 1 have _saratan_," I said. Cancer. Baba lifted his head from the
pages flapping in the breeze. Told me I could get the soda myself, all I had to do
was look in the trunk of the car.

Outside the orphanage, the next day, they ran out of chairs. A lot of people
had to stand to watch the opening ceremony. It was a windy day, and I sat behind
Baba on the little podium just outside the main entrance of the new building.
Baba was wearing a green suit and a caracul hat. Midway through the speech, the
wind knocked his hat off and everyone laughed. He motioned to me to hold his
hat for him and I was glad to, because then everyone would see that he was my
father, my Baba. He turned back to the microphone and said he hoped the
building was sturdier than his hat, and everyone laughed again. When Baba
ended his speech, people stood up and cheered. They clapped for a long time.
Afterward, people shook his hand. Some of them tousled my hair and shook my
hand too. I was so proud of Baba, of us.

But despite Baba's successes, people were always doubting him. They told
Baba that running a business wasn't in his blood and he should study law like his
father. So Baba proved them all wrong by not only running his own business but
becoming one of the richest merchants in Kabul. Baba and Rahim Khan built a
wildly successful carpet-exporting business, two pharmacies, and a restaurant.

When people scoffed that Baba would never marry well-after all, he was
not of royal blood-he wedded my mother, Sofia Akrami, a highly educated
woman universally regarded as one of Kabul's most respected, beautiful, and
virtuous ladies. And not only did she teach classic Farsi literature at the
university she was a descendant of the royal family, a fact that my father
playfully rubbed in the skeptics' faces by referring to her as "my princess."

With me as the glaring exception, my father molded the world around him
to his liking. The problem, of course, was that Baba saw the world in black and
white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can't love a
person who lives that way without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a
little.

When I was in fifth grade, we had a mullah who taught us about Islam. His
name was Mullah Fatiullah Khan, a short, stubby man with a face full of acne
scars and a gruff voice. He lectured us about the virtues of _zakat_ and the duty of
_hadj_; he taught us the intricacies of performing the five daily _namaz_ prayers,
and made us memorize verses from the Koran-and though he never translated
the words for us, he did stress, sometimes with the help of a stripped willow
branch, that we had to pronounce the Arabic words correctly so God would hear
us better. He told us one day that Islam considered drinking a terrible sin; those
who drank would answer for their sin on the day of _Qiyamat_, Judgment Day. In
those days, drinking was fairly common in Kabul. No one gave you a public
lashing for it, but those Afghans who did drink did so in private, out of respect.

People bought their scotch as "medicine" in brown paper bags from selected
"pharmacies." They would leave with the bag tucked out of sight, sometimes
drawing furtive, disapproving glances from those who knew about the store's
reputation for such transactions.

We were upstairs in Baba's study, the smoking room, when I told him
what Mullah Fatiullah Khan had taught us in class. Baba was pouring himself a
whiskey from the bar he had built in the corner of the room. He listened, nodded,
took a sip from his drink. Then he lowered himself into the leather sofa, put
down his drink, and propped me up on his lap. I felt as if I were sitting on a pair
of tree trunks. He took a deep breath and exhaled through his nose, the air
hissing through his mustache for what seemed an eternity I couldn't decide
whether I wanted to hug him or leap from his lap in mortal fear.

"I see you've confused what you're learning in school with actual
education," he said in his thick voice.

"But if what he said is true then does it make you a sinner, Baba?"

"Hmm." Baba crushed an ice cube between his teeth. "Do you want to
know what your father thinks about sin?"

'Yes.

"Then I'll tell you," Baba said, "but first understand this and understand it
now, Amir: You'll never learn anything of value from those bearded idiots."

"You mean Mullah Fatiullah Khan?"

Baba gestured with his glass. The ice clinked. "I mean all of them. Piss on
the beards of all those self-righteous monkeys."

I began to giggle. The image of Baba pissing on the beard of any monkey,
self-righteous or otherwise, was too much.

"They do nothing but thumb their prayer beads and recite a book written
in a tongue they don't even understand." He took a sip. "God help us all if
Afghanistan ever falls into their hands."

"But Mullah Fatiullah Khan seems nice/' I managed between bursts of
tittering.

"So did Genghis Khan," Baba said. "But enough about that. You asked
about sin and I want to tell you. Are you listening?"

"Yes," I said, pressing my lips together. But a chortle escaped through my
nose and made a snorting sound. That got me giggling again.

Baba's stony eyes bore into mine and, just like that, I wasn't laughing
anymore.

"I mean to speak to you man to man. Do you think you can handle that for

once?"

"Yes, Baba jan," I muttered, marveling, not for the first time, at how badly
Baba could sting me with so few words. We'd had a fleeting good moment--it
wasn't often Baba talked to me, let alone on his lap--and I'd been a fool to waste
it.

"Good," Baba said, but his eyes wondered. "Now, no matter what the
mullah teaches, there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin
is a variation of theft. Do you understand that?"

"No, Baba jan," I said, desperately wishing I did. 1 didn't want to
disappoint him again.

Baba heaved a sigh of impatience. That stung too, because he was not an
impatient man. I remembered all the times he didn't come home until after dark,
all the times I ate dinner alone. I'd ask Ali where Baba was, when he was coming
home, though I knew full well he was at the construction site, overlooking this,
supervising that. Didn't that take patience? I already hated all the kids he was

building the orphanage for; sometimes I wished they'd all died along with their
parents.

"When you kill a man, you steal a life," Baba said. "You steal his wife's
right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal
someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. Do
you see?"

I did. When Baba was six, a thief walked into my grandfather's house in
the middle of the night. My grandfather, a respected judge, confronted him, but
the thief stabbed him in the throat, killing him instantly--and robbing Baba of a
father. The townspeople caught the killer just before noon the next day; he
turned out to be a wanderer from the Kunduz region. They hanged him from the
branch of an oak tree with still two hours to go before afternoon prayer. It was
Rahim Khan, not Baba, who had told me that story. I was always learning things
about Baba from other people.

"There is no act more wretched than stealing, Amir," Baba said. "A man
who takes what's not his to take, be it a life or a loaf of _naan_... I spit on such a
man. And if I ever cross paths with him, God help him. Do you understand?"

1 found the idea of Baba clobbering a thief both exhilarating and terribly
frightening. "Yes, Baba."

"If there's a God out there, then I would hope he has more important
things to attend to than my drinking scotch or eating pork. Now, hop down. All
this talk about sin has made me thirsty again."

I watched him fill his glass at the bar and wondered how much time
would pass before we talked again the way we just had. Because the truth of it
was, I always felt like Baba hated me a little. And why not? After all, I _had_ killed
his beloved wife, his beautiful princess, hadn't I? The least I could have done was
to have had the decency to have turned out a little more like him. But I hadn't
turned out like him. Not at all.

IN SCHOOL, we used to play a game called _Sherjangi_, or "Battle of the Poems."
The Farsi teacher moderated it and it went something like this: You recited a
verse from a poem and your opponent had sixty seconds to reply with a verse
that began with the same letter that ended yours. Everyone in my class wanted
me on their team, because by the time I was eleven, I could recite dozens of
verses from Khayyam, Hafez, or Rumi's famous _Masnawi_. One time, I took on
the whole class and won. I told Baba about it later that night, but he just nodded,
muttered, "Good."

That was how I escaped my father's aloofness, in my dead mother's
books. That and Hassan, of course. I read everything, Rumi, Hafez, Saadi, Victor
Hugo, Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Ian Fleming. When I had finished my mother's
books--not the boring history ones, I was never much into those, but the novels,
the epics--I started spending my allowance on books. I bought one a week from
the bookstore near Cinema Park, and stored them in cardboard boxes when I ran
out of shelf room.

Of course, marrying a poet was one thing, but fathering a son who
preferred burying his face in poetry books to hunting... well, that wasn't how
Baba had envisioned it, I suppose. Real men didn't read poetry--and God forbid
they should ever write it! Real men--real boys--played soccer just as Baba had
when he had been young. Now _that_ was something to be passionate about. In
1970, Baba took a break from the construction of the orphanage and flew to
Tehran for a month to watch the World Cup games on television, since at the
time Afghanistan didn't have TVs yet. He signed me up for soccer teams to stir
the same passion in me. But I was pathetic, a blundering liability to my own
team, always in the way of an opportune pass or unwittingly blocking an open
lane. I shambled about the field on scraggy legs, squalled for passes that never
came my way. And the harder I tried, waving my arms over my head frantically
and screeching, "I'm open! I'm open!" the more I went ignored. But Baba
wouldn't give up. When it became abundantly clear that I hadn't inherited a
shred of his athletic talents, he settled for trying to turn me into a passionate
spectator. Certainly I could manage that, couldn't I? I faked interest for as long as
possible. I cheered with him when Kabul's team scored against Kandahar and
yelped insults at the referee when he called a penalty against our team. But Baba
sensed my lack of genuine interest and resigned himself to the bleak fact that his
son was never going to either play or watch soccer.

I remember one time Baba took me to the yearly _Buzkashi_ tournament
that took place on the first day of spring, New Year's Day. Buzkashi was, and still
is, Afghanistan's national passion. A _chapandaz_, a highly skilled horseman
usually patronized by rich aficionados, has to snatch a goat or cattle carcass from
the midst of a melee, carry that carcass with him around the stadium at full
gallop, and drop it in a scoring circle while a team of other _chapandaz_ chases
him and does everything in its power-kick, claw, whip, punch-to snatch the

carcass from him. That day, the crowd roared with excitement as the horsemen
on the field bellowed their battle cries and jostled for the carcass in a cloud of
dust. The earth trembled with the clatter of hooves. We watched from the upper
bleachers as riders pounded past us at full gallop, yipping and yelling, foam flying
from their horses' mouths.

At one point Baba pointed to someone. "Amir, do you see that man sitting
up there with those other men around him?"

I did.

"That's Henry Kissinger."

"Oh," I said. I didn't know who Henry Kissinger was, and I might have
asked. But at the moment, I watched with horror as one of the _chapandaz_ fell
off his saddle and was trampled under a score of hooves. His body was tossed
and hurled in the stampede like a rag doll, finally rolling to a stop when the
melee moved on. He twitched once and lay motionless, his legs bent at unnatural
angles, a pool of his blood soaking through the sand.

I began to cry.

I cried all the way back home. I remember how Baba's hands clenched
around the steering wheel. Clenched and unclenched. Mostly, I will never forget
Baba's valiant efforts to conceal the disgusted look on his face as he drove in
silence.

Later that night, I was passing by my father's study when I overheard him
speaking to Rahim Khan. I pressed my ear to the closed door.

"--grateful that he's healthy," Rahim Khan was saying.

"I know, I know. But he's always buried in those books or shuffling
around the house like he's lost in some dream."

'And?

"I wasn't like that." Baba sounded frustrated, almost angry.

Rahim Khan laughed. "Children aren't coloring books. You don't get to fill
them with your favorite colors."

"I'm telling you," Baba said, "I wasn't like that at all, and neither were any
of the kids I grew up with."

"You know, sometimes you are the most self-centered man I know,"

Rahim Khan said. He was the only person I knew who could get away with saying
something like that to Baba.

"It has nothing to do with that."

"Nay?"

"Nay."

"Then what?"

I heard the leather of Baba's seat creaking as he shifted on it. I closed my
eyes, pressed my ear even harder against the door, wanting to hear, not wanting
to hear. "Sometimes I look out this window and I see him playing on the street
with the neighborhood boys. I see how they push him around, take his toys from
him, give him a shove here, a whack there. And, you know, he never fights back.
Never. He just... drops his head and..."

"So he's not violent," Rahim Khan said.

"That's not what I mean, Rahim, and you know it," Baba shot back. "There
is something missing in that boy."

'Yes, a mean streak.

"Self-defense has nothing to do with meanness. You know what always
happens when the neighborhood boys tease him? Hassan steps in and fends
them off. I've seen it with my own eyes. And when they come home, I say to him,
'How did Hassan get that scrape on his face?' And he says, 'He fell down.' I'm
telling you, Rahim, there is something missing in that boy."

"You just need to let him find his way," Rahim Khan said.

"And where is he headed?" Baba said. "A boy who won't stand up for
himself becomes a man who can't stand up to anything."

"As usual you're oversimplifying."

"I don't think so."

"You're angry because you're afraid he'll never take over the business for

you."

"Now who's oversimplifying?" Baba said. "Look, I know there's a fondness
between you and him and I'm happy about that. Envious, but happy. I mean that.
He needs someone who...understands him, because God knows I don't. But
something about Amir troubles me in a way that I can't express. It's like..." I could
see him searching, reaching for the right words. He lowered his voice, but I heard
him anyway. "If I hadn't seen the doctor pull him out of my wife with my own
eyes, I'd never believe he's my son."

THE NEXT MORNING, as he was preparing my breakfast, Hassan asked if
something was bothering me. I snapped at him, told him to mind his own
business.

Rahim Khan had been wrong about the mean streak thing.

FOUR

In 1933, the year Baba was born and the year Zahir Shah began his forty-year
reign of Afghanistan, two brothers, young men from a wealthy and reputable
family in Kabul, got behind the wheel of their father's Ford roadster. High on
hashish and _mast_ on French wine, they struck and killed a Hazara husband and
wife on the road to Paghman. The police brought the somewhat contrite young
men and the dead couple's five-year-old orphan boy before my grandfather, who
was a highly regarded judge and a man of impeccable reputation. After hearing
the brothers' account and their father's plea for mercy, my grandfather ordered
the two young men to go to Kandahar at once and enlist in the army for one year-
-this despite the fact that their family had somehow managed to obtain them
exemptions from the draft. Their father argued, but not too vehemently, and in
the end, everyone agreed that the punishment had been perhaps harsh but fair.
As for the orphan, my grandfather adopted him into his own household, and told
the other servants to tutor him, but to be kind to him. That boy was Ali.

Ali and Baba grew up together as childhood playmates-at least until polio
crippled Ali's leg-just like Hassan and I grew up a generation later. Baba was
always telling us about the mischief he and Ali used to cause, and Ali would
shake his head and say, "But, Agha sahib, tell them who was the architect of the
mischief and who the poor laborer?" Baba would laugh and throw his arm
around Ali.

But in none of his stories did Baba ever refer to Ah as his friend.

The curious thing was, I never thought of Hassan and me as friends either.
Not in the usual sense, anyhow. Never mind that we taught each other to ride a
bicycle with no hands, or to build a fully functional homemade camera out of a
cardboard box. Never mind that we spent entire winters flying kites, running

kites. Never mind that to me, the face of Afghanistan is that of a boy with a thin¬
boned frame, a shaved head, and low-set ears, a boy with a Chinese doll face
perpetually lit by a harelipped smile.

Never mind any of those things. Because history isn't easy to overcome.
Neither is religion. In the end, 1 was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara, I was Sunni
and he was Shi'a, and nothing was ever going to change that. Nothing.

But we were kids who had learned to crawl together, and no history,
ethnicity, society, or religion was going to change that either. I spent most of the
first twelve years of my life playing with Hassan. Sometimes, my entire childhood
seems like one long lazy summer day with Hassan, chasing each other between
tangles of trees in my father's yard, playing hide-and-seek, cops and robbers,
cowboys and Indians, insect torture-with our crowning achievement undeniably
the time we plucked the stinger off a bee and tied a string around the poor thing
to yank it back every time it took flight.

We chased the _Kochi_, the nomads who passed through Kabul on their
way to the mountains of the north. We would hear their caravans approaching
our neighborhood, the mewling of their sheep, the baaing of their goats, the
jingle of bells around their camels' necks. We'd run outside to watch the caravan
plod through our street, men with dusty, weather-beaten faces and women
dressed in long, colorful shawls, beads, and silver bracelets around their wrists
and ankles. We hurled pebbles at their goats. We squirted water on their mules.
I'd make Hassan sit on the Wall of Ailing Corn and fire pebbles with his slingshot
at the camels' rears.

We saw our first Western together, _Rio Bravo_ with John Wayne, at the
Cinema Park, across the street from my favorite bookstore. I remember begging
Baba to take us to Iran so we could meet John Wayne. Baba burst out in gales of
his deep-throated laughter-a sound not unlike a truck engine revving up-and,
when he could talk again, explained to us the concept of voice dubbing. Hassan
and I were stunned. Dazed. John Wayne didn't really speak Farsi and he wasn't
Iranian! He was American, just like the friendly, longhaired men and women we
always saw hanging around in Kabul, dressed in their tattered, brightly colored
shirts. We saw _Rio Bravo_ three times, but we saw our favorite Western, _The
Magnificent Seven_, thirteen times. With each viewing, we cried at the end when
the Mexican kids buried Charles Bronson-who, as it turned out, wasn't Iranian
either.

We took strolls in the musty-smelling bazaars of the Shar-e-Nau section of
Kabul, or the new city, west of the Wazir Akbar Khan district. We talked about

whatever film we had just seen and walked amid the bustling crowds of
_bazarris_. We snaked our way among the merchants and the beggars, wandered
through narrow alleys cramped with rows of tiny, tightly packed stalls. Baba
gave us each a weekly allowance of ten Afghanis and we spent it on warm Coca-
Cola and rosewater ice cream topped with crushed pistachios.

During the school year, we had a daily routine. By the time I dragged
myself out of bed and lumbered to the bathroom, Hassan had already washed up,
prayed the morning _namaz_ with Ah, and prepared my breakfast: hot black tea
with three sugar cubes and a slice of toasted _naan_ topped with my favorite sour
cherry marmalade, all neatly placed on the dining table. While I ate and
complained about homework, Hassan made my bed, polished my shoes, ironed
my outfit for the day, packed my books and pencils. I'd hear him singing to
himself in the foyer as he ironed, singing old Hazara songs in his nasal voice.
Then, Baba and I drove off in his black Ford Mustang-a car that drew envious
looks everywhere because it was the same car Steve McQueen had driven in
_Bullitt_, a film that played in one theater for six months. Hassan stayed home
and helped Ah with the day's chores: hand-washing dirty clothes and hanging
them to dry in the yard, sweeping the floors, buying fresh _naan_ from the
bazaar, marinating meat for dinner, watering the lawn.

After school, Hassan and I met up, grabbed a book, and trotted up a bowl¬
shaped hill just north of my father's property in Wazir Akbar Khan. There was an
old abandoned cemetery atop the hill with rows of unmarked headstones and
tangles of brushwood clogging the aisles. Seasons of rain and snow had turned
the iron gate rusty and left the cemetery's low white stone walls in decay. There
was a pomegranate tree near the entrance to the cemetery. One summer day, I
used one of Ali's kitchen knives to carve our names on it: "Amir and Hassan, the
sultans of Kabul." Those words made it formal: the tree was ours. After school,
Hassan and I climbed its branches and snatched its blood-red pomegranates.
After we'd eaten the fruit and wiped our hands on the grass, I would read to
Hassan.

Sitting cross-legged, sunlight and shadows of pomegranate leaves dancing
on his face, Hassan absently plucked blades of grass from the ground as I read
him stories he couldn't read for himself. That Hassan would grow up illiterate
like Ali and most Hazaras had been decided the minute he had been born,
perhaps even the moment he had been conceived in Sanaubar's un-welcoming
womb-after all, what use did a servant have for the written word? But despite
his illiteracy, or maybe because of it, Hassan was drawn to the mystery of words,
seduced by a secret world forbidden to him. I read him poems and stories,
sometimes riddles-though I stopped reading those when I saw he was far better
at solving them than I was. So I read him unchallenging things, like the
misadventures of the bumbling Mullah Nasruddin and his donkey. We sat for

hours under that tree, sat there until the sun faded in the west, and still Hassan
insisted we had enough daylight for one more story, one more chapter.

My favorite part of reading to Hassan was when we came across a big
word that he didn't know. I'd tease him, expose his ignorance. One time, I was
reading him a Mullah Nasruddin story and he stopped me. "What does that word
mean?"

"Which one?"

"Imbecile."

"You don't know what it means?" I said, grinning.

"Nay, Amir agha."

"But it's such a common word!"

"Still, I don't know it." If he felt the sting of my tease, his smiling face
didn't show it.

"Well, everyone in my school knows what it means," I said. "Let's see.

'Imbecile.' It means smart, intelligent. I'll use it in a sentence for you.

'When it comes to words, Hassan is an imbecile.'"

"Aaah," he said, nodding.

I would always feel guilty about it later. So I'd try to make up for it by
giving him one of my old shirts or a broken toy. I would tell myself that was
amends enough for a harmless prank.

Hassan's favorite book by far was the _Shahnamah_, the tenth-century
epic of ancient Persian heroes. He liked all of the chapters, the shahs of old,
Feridoun, Zal, and Rudabeh. But his favorite story, and mine, was "Rostam and
Sohrab," the tale of the great warrior Rostam and his fleet-footed horse, Rakhsh.
Rostam mortally wounds his valiant nemesis, Sohrab, in battle, only to discover
that Sohrab is his long-lost son. Stricken with grief, Rostam hears his son's dying
words: If thou art indeed my father, then hast thou stained thy sword in the life¬
blood of thy son. And thou did'st it of thine obstinacy. For I sought to turn thee
unto love, and I implored of thee thy name, for I thought to behold in thee the
tokens recounted of my mother. But I appealed unto thy heart in vain, and now is
the time gone for meeting...

"Read it again please, Amir agha," Hassan would say. Sometimes tears
pooled in Hassan's eyes as I read him this passage, and I always wondered whom
he wept for, the grief-stricken Rostam who tears his clothes and covers his head
with ashes, or the dying Sohrab who only longed for his father's love? Personally,
I couldn't see the tragedy in Rostam's fate. After all, didn't all fathers in their
secret hearts harbor a desire to kill their sons? One day, in July 1973,1 played
another little trick on Hassan. I was reading to him, and suddenly I strayed from
the written story. I pretended I was reading from the book, flipping pages
regularly, but I had abandoned the text altogether, taken over the story, and
made up my own. Hassan, of course, was oblivious to this. To him, the words on
the page were a scramble of codes, indecipherable, mysterious. Words were
secret doorways and 1 held all the keys. After, 1 started to ask him if he'd liked the
story, a giggle rising in my throat, when Hassan began to clap.

"What are you doing?" I said.

"That was the best story you've read me in a long time," he said, still
clapping.

I laughed. "Really?"

"Really.

ii

"That's fascinating," I muttered. I meant it too. This was... wholly
unexpected.

'Are you sure, Hassan?

He was still clapping. "It was great, Amir agha. Will you read me more of it
tomorrow?"

"Fascinating," I repeated, a little breathless, feeling like a man who
discovers a buried treasure in his own backyard. Walking down the hill, thoughts
were exploding in my head like the fireworks at Chaman. _Best story you've read
me in a long time_, he'd said. I had read him a lot of stories. Hassan was asking
me something.

"What?" I said.

"What does that mean, 'fascinating'?"

I laughed. Clutched him in a hug and planted a kiss on his cheek.

"What was that for?" he said, startled, blushing.

I gave him a friendly shove. Smiled. "You're a prince, Hassan. You're a
prince and I love you."

That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It
was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he
wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always
been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make
himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did
his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls,
knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body
in his arms.

That evening, I climbed the stairs and walked into Baba's smoking room,
in my hands the two sheets of paper on which I had scribbled the story. Baba and
Rahim Khan were smoking pipes and sipping brandy when I came in.

"What is it, Amir?" Baba said, reclining on the sofa and lacing his hands
behind his head. Blue smoke swirled around his face. His glare made my throat
feel dry. I cleared it and told him I'd written a story.

Baba nodded and gave a thin smile that conveyed little more than feigned
interest. "Well, that's very good, isn't it?" he said. Then nothing more. He just
looked at me through the cloud of smoke.

I probably stood there for under a minute, but, to this day, it was one of
the longest minutes of my life. Seconds plodded by, each separated from the next
by an eternity. Air grew heavy damp, almost solid. I was breathing bricks. Baba
went on staring me down, and didn't offer to read.

As always, it was Rahim Khan who rescued me. He held out his hand and
favored me with a smile that had nothing feigned about it. "May I have it, Amir
jan? I would very much like to read it." Baba hardly ever used the term of
endearment _jan_ when he addressed me.

Baba shrugged and stood up. He looked relieved, as if he too had been
rescued by Rahim Khan. "Yes, give it to Kaka Rahim. I'm going upstairs to get
ready." And with that, he left the room. Most days I worshiped Baba with an
intensity approaching the religious. But right then, I wished I could open my
veins and drain his cursed blood from my body.

An hour later, as the evening sky dimmed, the two of them drove off in my
father's car to attend a party. On his way out, Rahim Khan hunkered before me
and handed me my story and another folded piece of paper. He flashed a smile
and winked. "For you. Read it later." Then he paused and added a single word
that did more to encourage me to pursue writing than any compliment any
editor has ever paid me. That word was _Bravo_.

When they left, I sat on my bed and wished Rahim Khan had been my
father. Then I thought of Baba and his great big chest and how good it felt when
he held me against it, how he smelled of Brut in the morning, and how his beard
tickled my face. I was overcome with such sudden guilt that I bolted to the
bathroom and vomited in the sink.

Later that night, curled up in bed, I read Rahim Khan's note over and over.
It read like this:

Amir jan, I enjoyed your story very much. _Mashallah_, God has granted
you a special talent. It is now your duty to hone that talent, because a person who
wastes his God-given talents is a donkey. You have written your story with sound
grammar and interesting style. But the most impressive thing about your story is
that it has irony. You may not even know what that word means. But you will
someday. It is something that some writers reach for their entire careers and
never attain. You have achieved it with your first story.

My door is and always will be open to you, Amir jan. I shall hear any story
you have to tell. Bravo.

Your friend,

Rahim

Buoyed by Rahim Khan's note, I grabbed the story and hurried downstairs to the
foyer where Ali and Hassan were sleeping on a mattress. That was the only time
they slept in the house, when Baba was away and Ah had to watch over me. I
shook Hassan awake and asked him if he wanted to hear a story.

He rubbed his sleep-clogged eyes and stretched. "Now? What time is it?"

"Never mind the time. This story's special. I wrote it myself," I whispered,
hoping not to wake Ali. Hassan's face brightened.

"Then I _have_ to hear it," he said, already pulling the blanket off him.

I read it to him in the living room by the marble fireplace. No playful
straying from the words this time; this was about me! Hassan was the perfect
audience in many ways, totally immersed in the tale, his face shifting with the
changing tones in the story. When I read the last sentence, he made a muted
clapping sound with his hands.

.Mashallah_, Amir agha. Bravo!" He was beaming.

"You liked it?" I said, getting my second taste--and how sweet it was--of a
positive review.

"Some day, _Inshallah_, you will be a great writer," Hassan said. "And
people all over the world will read your stories."

"You exaggerate, Hassan," I said, loving him for it.

"No. You will be great and famous," he insisted. Then he paused, as if on
the verge of adding something. He weighed his words and cleared his throat.
"But will you permit me to ask a question about the story?" he said shyly.

"Of course."

"Well..." he started, broke off.

"Tell me, Hassan," I said. I smiled, though suddenly the insecure writer in
me wasn't so sure he wanted to hear it.

"Well," he said, "if I may ask, why did the man kill his wife? In fact, why
did he ever have to feel sad to shed tears? Couldn't he have just smelled an
onion?"

I was stunned. That particular point, so obvious it was utterly stupid,
hadn't even occurred to me. I moved my lips soundlessly. It appeared that on the
same night I had learned about one of writing's objectives, irony, I would also be
introduced to one of its pitfalls: the Plot Hole. Taught by Hassan, of all people.
Hassan who couldn't read and had never written a single word in his entire life.
A voice, cold and dark, suddenly whispered in my ear, _What does he know, that
illiterate Hazara? He'll never be anything but a cook. How dare he criticize you?_
"Well," I began. But I never got to finish that sentence.

Because suddenly Afghanistan changed forever.

FIVE

Something roared like thunder. The earth shook a little and we heard the _rat-a-
tat-tat_ of gunfire. "Father!" Hassan cried. We sprung to our feet and raced out of
the living room. We found Ali hobbling frantically across the foyer.

"Father! What's that sound?" Hassan yelped, his hands outstretched
toward Ali. Ali wrapped his arms around us. A white light flashed, lit the sky in
silver. It flashed again and was followed by a rapid staccato of gunfire.

"They're hunting ducks," Ali said in a hoarse voice. "They hunt ducks at
night, you know. Don't be afraid."

A siren went off in the distance. Somewhere glass shattered and someone
shouted. I heard people on the street, jolted from sleep and probably still in their
pajamas, with ruffled hair and puffy eyes. Hassan was crying. Ah pulled him
close, clutched him with tenderness. Later, I would tell myself I hadn't felt
envious of Hassan. Not at all.

We stayed huddled that way until the early hours of the morning. The
shootings and explosions had lasted less than an hour, but they had frightened us
badly, because none of us had ever heard gunshots in the streets. They were
foreign sounds to us then. The generation of Afghan children whose ears would
know nothing but the sounds of bombs and gunfire was not yet born. Huddled
together in the dining room and waiting for the sun to rise, none of us had any
notion that a way of life had ended. Our way of life. If not quite yet, then at least it
was the beginning of the end. The end, the _official_ end, would come first in
April 1978 with the communist coup d'etat, and then in December 1979, when

Russian tanks would roll into the very same streets where Hassan and I played,
bringing the death of the Afghanistan I knew and marking the start of a still
ongoing era of bloodletting.

Just before sunrise, Baba's car peeled into the driveway. His door
slammed shut and his running footsteps pounded the stairs. Then he appeared in
the doorway and I saw something on his face. Something I didn't recognize right
away because I'd never seen it before: fear. "Amir! Hassan!" he exclaimed as he
ran to us, opening his arms wide. "They blocked all the roads and the telephone
didn't work. I was so worried!"

We let him wrap us in his arms and, for a brief insane moment, I was glad
about whatever had happened that night.

THEY WEREN'T SHOOTING ducks after all. As it turned out, they hadn't shot
much of anything that night of July 17,1973. Kabul awoke the next morning to
find that the monarchy was a thing of the past. The king, Zahir Shah, was away in
Italy. In his absence, his cousin Daoud Khan had ended the king's forty-year reign
with a bloodless coup.

I remember Hassan and I crouching that next morning outside my father's
study, as Baba and Rahim Khan sipped black tea and listened to breaking news of
the coup on Radio Kabul.

"Amir agha?" Hassan whispered.

"What?"

"What's a 'republic'?"

I shrugged. "I don't know." On Baba's radio, they were saying that word,
republic," over and over again.

'Amir agha?

"What?"

"Does 'republic' mean Father and I will have to move away?"

"I don't think so," I whispered back.

Hassan considered this. "Amir agha?"

"What?"

"I don't want them to send me and Father away."

I smiled. "_Bas_, you donkey. No one's sending you away."

"Amir agha?"

"What?"

"Do you want to go climb our tree?"

My smile broadened. That was another thing about Hassan. He always
knew when to say the right thing--the news on the radio was getting pretty
boring. Hassan went to his shack to get ready and I ran upstairs to grab a book.
Then I went to the kitchen, stuffed my pockets with handfuls of pine nuts, and
ran outside to find Hassan waiting for me. We burst through the front gates and
headed for the hill.

We crossed the residential street and were trekking through a barren
patch of rough land that led to the hill when, suddenly, a rock struck Hassan in

the back. We whirled around and my heart dropped. Assef and two of his friends,
Wali and Kamal, were approaching us.

Assef was the son of one of my father's friends, Mahmood, an airline pilot.
His family lived a few streets south of our home, in a posh, high-walled
compound with palm trees. If you were a kid living in the Wazir Akbar Khan
section of Kabul, you knew about Assef and his famous stainless-steel brass
knuckles, hopefully not through personal experience. Born to a German mother
and Afghan father, the blond, blue-eyed Assef towered over the other kids. His
well-earned reputation for savagery preceded him on the streets. Flanked by his
obeying friends, he walked the neighborhood like a Khan strolling through his
land with his eager-to-please entourage. His word was law, and if you needed a
little legal education, then those brass knuckles were just the right teaching tool.

I saw him use those knuckles once on a kid from the Karteh-Char district. I will
never forget how Assef's blue eyes glinted with a light not entirely sane and how
he grinned, how he _grinned_, as he pummeled that poor kid unconscious. Some
of the boys in Wazir Akbar Khan had nicknamed him Assef _Goshkhor_, or Assef
"the Ear Eater." Of course, none of them dared utter it to his face unless they
wished to suffer the same fate as the poor kid who had unwittingly inspired that
nickname when he had fought Assef over a kite and ended up fishing his right ear
from a muddy gutter. Years later, I learned an English word for the creature that
Assef was, a word for which a good Farsi equivalent does not exist: "sociopath."

Of all the neighborhood boys who tortured Ali, Assef was by far the most
relentless. He was, in fact, the originator of the Babalu jeer, _Hey, Babalu, who did
you eat today? Huh? Come on, Babalu, give us a smile! _ And on days when he felt
particularly inspired, he spiced up his badgering a little, _Hey, you flat-nosed
Babalu, who did you eat today? Tell us, you slant-eyed donkeyL Now he was
walking toward us, hands on his hips, his sneakers kicking up little puffs of dust.

"Good morning, _kunis_!" Assef exclaimed, waving. "Fag," that was
another of his favorite insults. Hassan retreated behind me as the three older
boys closed in. They stood before us, three tall boys dressed in jeans and T-
shirts. Towering over us all, Assef crossed his thick arms on his chest, a savage
sort of grin on his lips. Not for the first time, it occurred to me that Assef might
not be entirely sane. It also occurred to me how lucky I was to have Baba as my
father, the sole reason, I believe, Assef had mostly refrained from harassing me
too much.

He tipped his chin to Hassan. "Hey, Flat-Nose," he said. "How is Babalu?"

Hassan said nothing and crept another step behind me.

"Have you heard the news, boys?" Assef said, his grin never faltering. "The
king is gone. Good riddance. Long live the president! My father knows Daoud
Khan, did you know that, Amir?"

"So does my father," I said. In reality, I had no idea if that was true or not.

"So does my father," Assef mimicked me in a whining voice. Kamal and
Wali cackled in unison. I wished Baba were there.

"Well, Daoud Khan dined at our house last year," Assef went on. "How do
you like that, Amir?"

I wondered if anyone would hear us scream in this remote patch of land.
Baba's house was a good kilometer away. I wished we'd stayed at the house.

"Do you know what I will tell Daoud Khan the next time he comes to our
house for dinner?" Assef said. "I'm going to have a little chat with him, man to
man, _mard_ to _mard_. Tell him what I told my mother. About Hitler. Now, there
was a leader. A great leader. A man with vision. I'll tell Daoud Khan to remember
that if they had let Hitler finish what he had started, the world be a better place
now"

"Baba says Hitler was crazy, that he ordered a lot of innocent people
killed," I heard myself say before I could clamp a hand on my mouth.

Assef snickered. "He sounds like my mother, and she's German; she
should know better. But then they want you to believe that, don't they? They
don't want you to know the truth."

I didn't know who "they" were, or what truth they were hiding, and I
didn't want to find out. I wished I hadn't said anything. I wished again I'd look up
and see Baba coming up the hill.

"But you have to read books they don't give out in school," Assef said. "I
have. And my eyes have been opened. Now I have a vision, and I'm going to share
it with our new president. Do you know what it is?"

I shook my head. He'd tell me anyway; Assef always answered his own
questions.

His blue eyes flicked to Hassan. "Afghanistan is the land of Pashtuns. It
always has been, always will be. We are the true Afghans, the pure Afghans, not
this Flat-Nose here. His people pollute our homeland, our watan. They dirty our
blood." He made a sweeping, grandiose gesture with his hands. "Afghanistan for
Pashtuns, I say. That's my vision."

Assef shifted his gaze to me again. He looked like someone coming out of a
good dream. "Too late for Hitler," he said. "But not for us."

He reached for something from the back pocket of his jeans. "I'll ask the
president to do what the king didn't have the quwat to do. To rid Afghanistan of
all the dirty, Kasseef Hazaras."

"Just let us go, Assef," I said, hating the way my voice trembled. "We're not
bothering you."

"Oh, you're bothering me," Assef said. And I saw with a sinking heart what
he had fished out of his pocket. Of course. His stainless-steel brass knuckles
sparkled in the sun. "You're bothering me very much. In fact, you bother me
more than this Hazara here. How can you talk to him, play with him, let him
touch you?" he said, his voice dripping with disgust. Wali and Kamal nodded and
grunted in agreement. Assef narrowed his eyes. Shook his head. When he spoke
again, he sounded as baffled as he looked. "How can you call him your 'friend'?"

_But he's not my friend!_ I almost blurted. _He's my servant!. Had I really
thought that? Of course I hadn't. I hadn't. I treated Hassan well, just like a friend,
better even, more like a brother. But if so, then why, when Baba's friends came to
visit with their kids, didn't I ever include Hassan in our games? Why did I play
with Hassan only when no one else was around? Assef slipped on the brass
knuckles. Gave me an icy look. "You're part of the problem, Amir. If idiots like
you and your father didn't take these people in, we'd be rid of them by now.

They'd all just go rot in Hazarajat where they belong. You're a disgrace to
Afghanistan."

I looked in his crazy eyes and saw that he meant it. He _really_ meant to
hurt me. Assef raised his fist and came for me.

There was a flurry of rapid movement behind me. Out of the corner of my
eye, I saw Hassan bend down and stand up quickly. Assef's eyes flicked to
something behind me and widened with surprise. I saw that same look of
astonishment on Kamal and Wali's faces as they too saw what had happened
behind me.

I turned and came face to face with Hassan's slingshot. Hassan had pulled
the wide elastic band all the way back. In the cup was a rock the size of a walnut.
Hassan held the slingshot pointed directly at Assef's face. His hand trembled with
the strain of the pulled elastic band and beads of sweat had erupted on his brow.

"Please leave us alone, Agha," Hassan said in a flat tone. He'd referred to
Assef as "Agha," and I wondered briefly what it must be like to live with such an
ingrained sense of one's place in a hierarchy.

Assef gritted his teeth. "Put it down, you motherless Hazara."

"Please leave us be, Agha," Hassan said.

Assef smiled. "Maybe you didn't notice, but there are three of us and two
of you."

Hassan shrugged. To an outsider, he didn't look scared. But Hassan's face
was my earliest memory and I knew all of its subtle nuances, knew each and
every twitch and flicker that ever rippled across it. And I saw that he was scared.
He was scared plenty.

"You are right, Agha. But perhaps you didn't notice that I'm the one
holding the slingshot. If you make a move, they'll have to change your nickname
from Assef 'the Ear Eater' to 'One-Eyed Assef,' because I have this rock pointed at

your left eye." He said this so flatly that even I had to strain to hear the fear that 1
knew hid under that calm voice.

Assef's mouth twitched. Wali and Kamal watched this exchange with
something akin to fascination. Someone had challenged their god. Humiliated
him. And, worst of all, that someone was a skinny Hazara. Assef looked from the
rock to Hassan. He searched Hassan's face intently. What he found in it must
have convinced him of the seriousness of Hassan's intentions, because he
lowered his fist.

"You should know something about me, Hazara," Assef said gravely. "I'm a
very patient person. This doesn't end today, believe me." He turned to me. "This
isn't the end for you either, Amir. Someday, I'll make you face me one on one."
Assef retreated a step. His disciples followed.

"Your Hazara made a big mistake today, Amir," he said. They then turned
around, walked away. I watched them walk down the hill and disappear behind a
wall.

Hassan was trying to tuck the slingshot in his waist with a pair of
trembling hands. His mouth curled up into something that was supposed to be a
reassuring smile. It took him five tries to tie the string of his trousers. Neither
one of us said much of anything as we walked home in trepidation, certain that
Assef and his friends would ambush us every time we turned a corner. They
didn't and that should have comforted us a little. But it didn't. Not at all.

FOR THE NEXT COUPLE of years, the words _economic development, and
_reform_ danced on a lot of lips in Kabul. The constitutional monarchy had been
abolished, replaced by a republic, led by a president of the republic. For a while,
a sense of rejuvenation and purpose swept across the land. People spoke of
women's rights and modern technology.

And for the most part, even though a new leader lived in _Arg_--the royal
palace in Kabul--life went on as before. People went to work Saturday through
Thursday and gathered for picnics on Fridays in parks, on the banks of Ghargha
Lake, in the gardens of Paghman. Multicolored buses and lorries filled with
passengers rolled through the narrow streets of Kabul, led by the constant

shouts of the driver assistants who straddled the vehicles' rear bumpers and
yelped directions to the driver in their thick Kabuli accent. On _Eid_, the three
days of celebration after the holy month of Ramadan, Kabulis dressed in their
best and newest clothes and visited their families. People hugged and kissed and
greeted each other with "_Eid Mubarak_." Happy Eid. Children opened gifts and
played with dyed hard-boiled eggs.

Early that following winter of 1974, Hassan and I were playing in the yard
one day, building a snow fort, when Ah called him in. "Hassan, Agha sahib wants
to talk to you!" He was standing by the front door, dressed in white, hands
tucked under his armpits, breath puffing from his mouth.

Hassan and I exchanged a smile. We'd been waiting for his call all day: It
was Hassan's birthday. "What is it, Father, do you know? Will you tell us?"
Hassan said. His eyes were gleaming.

Ali shrugged. "Agha sahib hasn't discussed it with me."

"Come on, Ali, tell us," I pressed. "Is it a drawing book? Maybe a new
pistol?"

Like Hassan, Ali was incapable of lying. Every year, he pretended not to
know what Baba had bought Hassan or me for our birthdays. And every year, his
eyes betrayed him and we coaxed the goods out of him. This time, though, it
seemed he was telling the truth.

Baba never missed Hassan's birthday. For a while, he used to ask Hassan
what he wanted, but he gave up doing that because Hassan was always too
modest to actually suggest a present. So every winter Baba picked something out
himself. He bought him a Japanese toy truck one year, an electric locomotive and
train track set another year. The previous year, Baba had surprised Hassan with
a leather cowboy hat just like the one Clint Eastwood wore in _The Good, the
Bad, and the Ugly_-which had unseated _The Magnificent Seven_ as our favorite
Western. That whole winter, Hassan and I took turns wearing the hat, and belted
out the film's famous music as we climbed mounds of snow and shot each other
dead.

We took off our gloves and removed our snow-laden boots at the front
door. When we stepped into the foyer, we found Baba sitting by the wood-

burning cast-iron stove with a short, balding Indian man dressed in a brown suit
and red tie.

"Hassan," Baba said, smiling coyly, "meet your birthday present."

Hassan and I traded blank looks. There was no gift-wrapped box in sight.
No bag. No toy. Just Ali standing behind us, and Baba with this slight Indian
fellow who looked a little like a mathematics teacher.

The Indian man in the brown suit smiled and offered Hassan his hand. "I
am Dr. Kumar," he said. "It's a pleasure to meet you." He spoke Farsi with a thick,
rolling Hindi accent.

"_Salaam alaykum_," Hassan said uncertainly. He gave a polite tip of the
head, but his eyes sought his father behind him. Ali moved closer and set his
hand on Hassan's shoulder.

Baba met Hassan's wary-and puzzled-eyes. "I have summoned Dr.
Kumar from New Delhi. Dr. Kumar is a plastic surgeon."

"Do you know what that is?" the Indian man-Dr. Kumar-said.

Hassan shook his head. He looked to me for help but I shrugged. All I
knew was that you went to a surgeon to fix you when you had appendicitis. I
knew this because one of my classmates had died of it the year before and the
teacher had told us they had waited too long to take him to a surgeon. We both
looked to Ah, but of course with him you could never tell. His face was impassive
as ever, though something sober had melted into his eyes.

"Well," Dr. Kumar said, "my job is to fix things on people's bodies.
Sometimes their faces."

"Oh," Hassan said. He looked from Dr. Kumar to Baba to Ali. His hand
touched his upper lip. "Oh," he said again.

"It's an unusual present, I know," Baba said. "And probably not what you
had in mind, but this present will last you forever."

"Oh," Hassan said. He licked his lips. Cleared his throat. "Agha sahib, will
it... will it--"

"Nothing doing," Dr. Kumar intervened, smiling kindly. "It will not hurt
you one bit. In fact, I will give you a medicine and you will not remember a
thing."

"Oh," Hassan said. He smiled back with relief. A little relief anyway. "I
wasn't scared, Agha sahib, I just..." Hassan might have been fooled, but I wasn't. I
knew that when doctors said it wouldn't hurt, that's when you knew you were in
trouble. With dread, I remembered my circumcision the year prior. The doctor
had given me the same line, reassured me it wouldn't hurt one bit. But when the
numbing medicine wore off later that night, it felt like someone had pressed a
red hot coal to my loins. Why Baba waited until I was ten to have me circumcised
was beyond me and one of the things I will never forgive him for.

I wished I too had some kind of scar that would beget Baba's sympathy. It
wasn't fair. Hassan hadn't done anything to earn Baba's affections; he'd just been
born with that stupid harelip.

The surgery went well. We were all a little shocked when they first
removed the bandages, but kept our smiles on just as Dr. Kumar had instructed
us. It wasn't easy, because Hassan's upper lip was a grotesque mesh of swollen,
raw tissue. I expected Hassan to cry with horror when the nurse handed him the
mirror. Ah held his hand as Hassan took a long, thoughtful look into it. He
muttered something I didn't understand. I put my ear to his mouth. He
whispered it again.

"_Tashakor_." Thank you.

Then his lips twisted, and, that time, I knew just what he was doing. He
was smiling. Just as he had, emerging from his mother's womb.

The swelling subsided, and the wound healed with time. Soon, it was just
a pink jagged line running up from his lip. By the following winter, it was only a

faint scar. Which was ironic. Because that was the winter that Hassan stopped
smiling.

SIX

Winter.

Here is what I do on the first day of snowfall every year: I step out of the
house early in the morning, still in my pajamas, hugging my arms against the
chill. I find the driveway, my father's car, the walls, the trees, the rooftops, and
the hills buried under a foot of snow. I smile. The sky is seamless and blue, the
snow so white my eyes burn. I shovel a handful of the fresh snow into my mouth,
listen to the muffled stillness broken only by the cawing of crows. I walk down
the front steps, barefoot, and call for Hassan to come out and see.

Winter was every kid's favorite season in Kabul, at least those whose
fathers could afford to buy a good iron stove. The reason was simple: They shut
down school for the icy season. Winter to me was the end of long division and
naming the capital of Bulgaria, and the start of three months of playing cards by
the stove with Hassan, free Russian movies on Tuesday mornings at Cinema
Park, sweet turnip _qurma_ over rice for lunch after a morning of building
snowmen.

And kites, of course. Flying kites. And running them.

For a few unfortunate kids, winter did not spell the end of the school year.
There were the so-called voluntary winter courses. No kid I knew ever
volunteered to go to these classes; parents, of course, did the volunteering for
them. Fortunately for me, Baba was not one of them. I remember one kid,

Ahmad, who lived across the street from us. His father was some kind of doctor, I

think. Ahmad had epilepsy and always wore a wool vest and thick black-rimmed
glasses-he was one of Assef's regular victims. Every morning, I watched from my
bedroom window as their Hazara servant shoveled snow from the driveway,
cleared the way for the black Opel. I made a point of watching Ahmad and his
father get into the car, Ahmad in his wool vest and winter coat, his schoolbag
filled with books and pencils. I waited until they pulled away, turned the corner,
then I slipped back into bed in my flannel pajamas. I pulled the blanket to my
chin and watched the snowcapped hills in the north through the window.
Watched them until 1 drifted back to sleep.

I loved wintertime in Kabul. I loved it for the soft pattering of snow
against my window at night, for the way fresh snow crunched under my black
rubber boots, for the warmth of the cast-iron stove as the wind screeched
through the yards, the streets. But mostly because, as the trees froze and ice
sheathed the roads, the chill between Baba and me thawed a little. And the
reason for that was the kites. Baba and I lived in the same house, but in different
spheres of existence. Kites were the one paper thin slice of intersection between
those spheres.

EVERY WINTER, districts in Kabul held a kite-fighting tournament. And if you
were a boy living in Kabul, the day of the tournament was undeniably the
highlight of the cold season. I never slept the night before the tournament. I'd roll
from side to side, make shadow animals on the wall, even sit on the balcony in
the dark, a blanket wrapped around me. I felt like a soldier trying to sleep in the
trenches the night before a major battle. And that wasn't so far off. In Kabul,
fighting kites was a little like going to war.

As with any war, you had to ready yourself for battle. For a while, Hassan
and I used to build our own kites. We saved our weekly allowances in the fall,
dropped the money in a little porcelain horse Baba had brought one time from
Herat. When the winds of winter began to blow and snow fell in chunks, we
undid the snap under the horse's belly. We went to the bazaar and bought
bamboo, glue, string, and paper. We spent hours every day shaving bamboo for
the center and cross spars, cutting the thin tissue paper which made for easy
dipping and recovery And then, of course, we had to make our own string, or tar.
If the kite was the gun, then _tar_, the glass-coated cutting line, was the bullet in
the chamber. We'd go out in the yard and feed up to five hundred feet of string
through a mixture of ground glass and glue. We'd then hang the line between the
trees, leave it to dry. The next day, we'd wind the battle-ready line around a
wooden spool. By the time the snow melted and the rains of spring swept in,
every boy in Kabul bore telltale horizontal gashes on his fingers from a whole

winter of fighting kites. I remember how my classmates and I used to huddle,
compare our battle scars on the first day of school. The cuts stung and didn't heal
for a couple of weeks, but I didn't mind. They were reminders of a beloved
season that had once again passed too quickly. Then the class captain would
blow his whistle and we'd march in a single file to our classrooms, longing for
winter already, greeted instead by the specter of yet another long school year.

But it quickly became apparent that Hassan and I were better kite fighters
than kite makers. Some flaw or other in our design always spelled its doom. So
Baba started taking us to Saifo's to buy our kites. Saifo was a nearly blind old
man who was a _moochi_ by profession--a shoe repairman. But he was also the
city's most famous kite maker, working out of a tiny hovel on Jadeh Maywand,
the crowded street south of the muddy banks of the Kabul River. I remember you
had to crouch to enter the prison cell-sized store, and then had to lift a trapdoor
to creep down a set of wooden steps to the dank basement where Saifo stored
his coveted kites. Baba would buy us each three identical kites and spools of
glass string. If I changed my mind and asked for a bigger and fancier kite, Baba
would buy it for me-but then he'd buy it for Hassan too. Sometimes I wished he
wouldn't do that. Wished he'd let me be the favorite.

The kite-fighting tournament was an old winter tradition in Afghanistan.
It started early in the morning on the day of the contest and didn't end until only
the winning kite flew in the sky-I remember one year the tournament outlasted
daylight. People gathered on sidewalks and roofs to cheer for their kids. The
streets filled with kite fighters, jerking and tugging on their lines, squinting up to
the sky, trying to gain position to cut the opponent's line. Every kite fighter had
an assistant-in my case, Hassan-who held the spool and fed the line.

One time, a bratty Hindi kid whose family had recently moved into the
neighborhood told us that in his hometown, kite fighting had strict rules and
regulations. "You have to play in a boxed area and you have to stand at a right
angle to the wind," he said proudly. "And you can't use aluminum to make your
glass string." Hassan and I looked at each other. Cracked up. The Hindi kid would
soon learn what the British learned earlier in the century, and what the Russians
would eventually learn by the late 1980s: that Afghans are an independent
people. Afghans cherish custom but abhor rules. And so it was with kite fighting.
The rules were simple: No rules. Fly your kite. Cut the opponents. Good luck.

Except that wasn't all. The real fun began when a kite was cut. That was
where the kite runners came in, those kids who chased the windblown kite
drifting through the neighborhoods until it came spiraling down in a field,
dropping in someone's yard, on a tree, or a rooftop. The chase got pretty fierce;
hordes of kite runners swarmed the streets, shoved past each other like those

people from Spain I'd read about once, the ones who ran from the bulls. One year
a neighborhood kid climbed a pine tree for a kite. A branch snapped under his
weight and he fell thirty feet. Broke his back and never walked again. But he fell
with the kite still in his hands. And when a kite runner had his hands on a kite, no
one could take it from him. That wasn't a rule. That was custom.

For kite runners, the most coveted prize was the last fallen kite of a
winter tournament. It was a trophy of honor, something to be displayed on a
mantle for guests to admire. When the sky cleared of kites and only the final two
remained, every kite runner readied himself for the chance to land this prize. He
positioned himself at a spot that he thought would give him a head start. Tense
muscles readied themselves to uncoil. Necks craned. Eyes crinkled. Fights broke
out. And when the last kite was cut, all hell broke loose.

Over the years, I had seen a lot of guys run kites. But Hassan was by far
the greatest kite runner I'd ever seen. It was downright eerie the way he always
got to the spot the kite would land before the kite did, as if he had some sort of
inner compass.

I remember one overcast winter day, Hassan and I were running a kite. I
was chasing him through neighborhoods, hopping gutters, weaving through
narrow streets. I was a year older than him, but Hassan ran faster than I did, and
I was falling behind.

"Hassan! Wait!" I yelled, my breathing hot and ragged.

He whirled around, motioned with his hand. "This way!" he called before
dashing around another corner. I looked up, saw that the direction we were
running was opposite to the one the kite was drifting.

"We're losing it! We're going the wrong way!" I cried out.

"Trust me!" I heard him call up ahead. I reached the corner and saw
Hassan bolting along, his head down, not even looking at the sky, sweat soaking
through the back of his shirt. I tripped over a rock and fell--I wasn't just slower
than Hassan but clumsier too; I'd always envied his natural athieticism. When I
staggered to my feet, I caught a glimpse of Hassan disappearing around another
street corner. I hobbled after him, spikes of pain battering my scraped knees.

I saw we had ended up on a rutted dirt road near Isteqial Middle School.
There was a field on one side where lettuce grew in the summer, and a row of
sour cherry trees on the other. I found Hassan sitting cross-legged at the foot of
one of the trees, eating from a fistful of dried mulberries.

"What are we doing here?" I panted, my stomach roiling with nausea.

He smiled. "Sit with me, Amir agha."

I dropped next to him, lay on a thin patch of snow, wheezing. "You're
wasting our time. It was going the other way, didn't you see?"

Hassan popped a mulberry in his mouth. "It's coming," he said. I could
hardly breathe and he didn't even sound tired.

"How do you know?" I said.

"I know."

"How can you know?"

He turned to me. A few sweat beads rolled from his bald scalp. "Would I
ever lie to you, Amir agha?"

Suddenly I decided to toy with him a little. "I don't know. Would you?"

"I'd sooner eat dirt," he said with a look of indignation.

Really? You'd do that?

He threw me a puzzled look. "Do what?

"Eat dirt if I told you to," I said. I knew I was being cruel, like when I'd
taunt him if he didn't know some big word. But there was something fascinating-
-albeit in a sick way--about teasing Hassan. Kind of like when we used to play
insect torture. Except now, he was the ant and I was holding the magnifying
glass.

His eyes searched my face for a long time. We sat there, two boys under a
sour cherry tree, suddenly looking, really looking, at each other. That's when it
happened again: Hassan's face changed. Maybe not_changed_, not really, but
suddenly I had the feeling I was looking at two faces, the one I knew, the one that
was my first memory, and another, a second face, this one lurking just beneath
the surface. I'd seen it happen before--it always shook me up a little. It just
appeared, this other face, for a fraction of a moment, long enough to leave me
with the unsettling feeling that maybe I'd seen it someplace before. Then Hassan
blinked and it was just him again. Just Hassan.

"If you asked, I would," he finally said, looking right at me. I dropped my
eyes. To this day, I find it hard to gaze directly at people like Hassan, people who
mean every word they say.

"But I wonder," he added. "Would you ever ask me to do such a thing,
Amir agha?" And, just like that, he had thrown at me his own little test. If I was
going to toy with him and challenge his loyalty, then he'd toy with me, test my
integrity.

I wished I hadn't started this conversation. I forced a smile. "Don't be
stupid, Hassan. You know I wouldn't."

Hassan returned the smile. Except his didn't look forced. "I know," he said.
And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think
everyone else does too.

"Here it comes," Hassan said, pointing to the sky. He rose to his feet and
walked a few paces to his left. I looked up, saw the kite plummeting toward us.

I heard footfalls, shouts, an approaching melee of kite runners. But they
were wasting their time. Because Hassan stood with his arms wide open, smiling,
waiting for the kite. And may God--if He exists, that is--strike me blind if the kite
didn't just drop into his outstretched arms.

IN THE WINTER OF 1975,1 saw Hassan run a kite for the last time.

Usually, each neighborhood held its own competition. But that year, the
tournament was going to be held in my neighborhood, Wazir Akbar Khan, and
several other districts--Karteh-Char, Karteh-Parwan, Mekro-Rayan, and Koteh-
Sangi-had been invited. You could hardly go anywhere without hearing talk of
the upcoming tournament. Word had it this was going to be the biggest
tournament in twenty-five years.

One night that winter, with the big contest only four days away, Baba and
I sat in his study in overstuffed leather chairs by the glow of the fireplace. We
were sipping tea, talking. Ali had served dinner earlier-potatoes and curried
cauliflower over rice-and had retired for the night with Hassan. Baba was
fattening his pipe and I was asking him to tell the story about the winter a pack
of wolves had descended from the mountains in Herat and forced everyone to
stay indoors for a week, when he lit a match and said, casually, "I think maybe
you'll win the tournament this year. What do you think?"

I didn't know what to think. Or what to say. Was that what it would take?
Had he just slipped me a key? I was a good kite fighter. Actually, a very good one.
A few times, I'd even come close to winning the winter tournament-once, I'd
made it to the final three. But coming close wasn't the same as winning, was it?
Baba hadn't _come close_. He had won because winners won and everyone else
just went home. Baba was used to winning, winning at everything he set his mind
to. Didn't he have a right to expect the same from his son? And just imagine. If I
did win...

Baba smoked his pipe and talked. I pretended to listen. But I couldn't
listen, not really, because Baba's casual little comment had planted a seed in my
head: the resolution that I would win that winter's tournament. I was going to
win. There was no other viable option. I was going to win, and I was going to run
that last kite. Then I'd bring it home and show it to Baba. Show him once and for
all that his son was worthy. Then maybe my life as a ghost in this house would
finally be over. I let myself dream: I imagined conversation and laughter over

dinner instead of silence broken only by the clinking of silverware and the
occasional grunt. I envisioned us taking a Friday drive in Baba's car to Paghman,
stopping on the way at Ghargha Lake for some fried trout and potatoes. We'd go
to the zoo to see Marjan the lion, and maybe Baba wouldn't yawn and steal looks
at his wristwatch all the time. Maybe Baba would even read one of my stories. I'd
write him a hundred if I thought he'd read one. Maybe he'd call me Amir jan like
Rahim Khan did. And maybe, just maybe, I would finally be pardoned for killing
my mother.

Baba was telling me about the time he'd cut fourteen kites on the same
day. I smiled, nodded, laughed at all the right places, but I hardly heard a word he
said. I had a mission now. And I wasn't going to fail Baba. Not this time.

IT SNOWED HEAVILY the night before the tournament. Hassan and I sat under
the kursi and played panjpar as wind-rattled tree branches tapped on the
window. Earlier that day, I'd asked Ali to set up the kursi for us-which was
basically an electric heater under a low table covered with a thick, quilted
blanket.

Around the table, he arranged mattresses and cushions, so as many as
twenty people could sit and slip their legs under. Hassan and I used to spend
entire snowy days snug under the kursi, playing chess, cards-mostly panjpar.

I killed Hassan's ten of diamonds, played him two jacks and a six. Next
door, in Baba's study, Baba and Rahim Khan were discussing business with a
couple of other men-one of them I recognized as Assef's father. Through the wall,
I could hear the scratchy sound of Radio Kabul News.

Hassan killed the six and picked up the jacks. On the radio, Daoud Khan
was announcing something about foreign investments.

"He says someday we'll have television in Kabul," I said.

Who?

Daoud Khan, you ass, the president

Hassan giggled. "I heard they already have it in Iran," he said. I sighed.
"Those Iranians..." For a lot of Hazaras, Iran represented a sanctuary of sorts--I
guess because, like Hazaras, most Iranians were Shi'a Muslims. But I
remembered something my teacher had said that summer about Iranians, that
they were grinning smooth talkers who patted you on the back with one hand
and picked your pocket with the other. I told Baba about that and he said my
teacher was one of those jealous Afghans, jealous because Iran was a rising
power in Asia and most people around the world couldn't even find Afghanistan
on a world map. "It hurts to say that," he said, shrugging. "But better to get hurt
by the truth than comforted with a lie."

"I'll buy you one someday," I said.

Hassan's face brightened. "A television? In truth?"

"Sure. And not the black-and-white kind either. We'll probably be grown¬
ups by then, but I'll get us two. One for you and one for me."

"I'll put it on my table, where I keep my drawings," Hassan said.

His saying that made me kind of sad. Sad for who Hassan was, where he
lived. For how he'd accepted the fact that he'd grow old in that mud shack in the
yard, the way his father had. I drew the last card, played him a pair of queens and
a ten.

Hassan picked up the queens. "You know, I think you're going to make
Agha sahib very proud tomorrow."

"You think so?"

Inshallah_," he said.

"_Inshallah_," I echoed, though the "God willing" qualifier didn't sound as
sincere coming from my lips. That was the thing with Hassan. He was so
goddamn pure, you always felt like a phony around him.

I killed his king and played him my final card, the ace of spades. He had to
pick it up. I'd won, but as I shuffled for a new game, I had the distinct suspicion
that Hassan had let me win.

"Amir agha?"

"What?"

"You know... I _like_ where I live." He was always doing that, reading my

mind.

"It's my home."

"Whatever," I said. "Get ready to lose again."

SEVEN

The next morning, as he brewed black tea for breakfast, Hassan told me he'd had
a dream. "We were at Ghargha Lake, you, me, Father, Agha sahib, Rahim Khan,
and thousands of other people," he said. "It was warm and sunny, and the lake
was clear like a mirror. But no one was swimming because they said a monster
had come to the lake. It was swimming at the bottom, waiting."

He poured me a cup and added sugar, blew on it a few times. Put it before
me. "So everyone is scared to get in the water, and suddenly you kick off your
shoes, Amir agha, and take off your shirt. 'There's no monster,' you say. 'I'll show
you all.' And before anyone can stop you, you dive into the water, start
swimming away. I follow you in and we're both swimming."

"But you can't swim."

Hassan laughed. "It's a dream, Amir agha, you can do anything. Anyway,
everyone is screaming, 'Get out! Get out!' but we just swim in the cold water. We
make it way out to the middle of the lake and we stop swimming. We turn
toward the shore and wave to the people. They look small like ants, but we can
hear them clapping. They see now. There is no monster, just water. They change
the name of the lake after that, and call it the 'Lake of Amir and Hassan, Sultans
of Kabul,' and we get to charge people money for swimming in it."

"So what does it mean?" I said.

He coated my _naan_ with marmalade, placed it on a plate. "I don't know. I
was hoping you could tell me."

"Well, it's a dumb dream. Nothing happens in it."

"Father says dreams always mean something."

I sipped some tea. "Why don't you ask him, then? He's so smart," I said,
more curtly than I had intended. I hadn't slept all night. My neck and back were
like coiled springs, and my eyes stung. Still, I had been mean to Hassan. I almost
apologized, then didn't. Hassan understood I was just nervous. Hassan always
understood about me.

Upstairs, I could hear the water running in Baba's bathroom.

THE STREETS GLISTENED with fresh snow and the sky was a blameless blue.
Snow blanketed every rooftop and weighed on the branches of the stunted
mulberry trees that lined our street. Overnight, snow had nudged its way into
every crack and gutter. I squinted against the blinding white when Hassan and I
stepped through the wrought-iron gates. Ali shut the gates behind us. I heard
him mutter a prayer under his breath--he always said a prayer when his son left
the house.

I had never seen so many people on our street. Kids were flinging
snowballs, squabbling, chasing one another, giggling. Kite fighters were huddling
with their spool holders, making last minute preparations. From adjacent streets,
I could hear laughter and chatter. Already, rooftops were jammed with
spectators reclining in lawn chairs, hot tea steaming from thermoses, and the
music of Ahmad Zahir blaring from cassette players. The immensely popular
Ahmad Zahir had revolutionized Afghan music and outraged the purists by
adding electric guitars, drums, and horns to the traditional tabla and
harmonium; on stage or at parties, he shirked the austere and nearly morose
stance of older singers and actually smiled when he sang--sometimes even at
women. I turned my gaze to our rooftop, found Baba and Rahim Khan sitting on a
bench, both dressed in wool sweaters, sipping tea. Baba waved. I couldn't tell if
he was waving at me or Hassan.

"We should get started," Hassan said. He wore black rubber snow boots
and a bright green chapan over a thick sweater and faded corduroy pants.
Sunlight washed over his face, and, in it, I saw how well the pink scar above his
lip had healed.

Suddenly I wanted to withdraw. Pack it all in, go back home. What was I
thinking? Why was I putting myself through this, when I already knew the
outcome? Baba was on the roof, watching me. I felt his glare on me like the heat
of a blistering sun. This would be failure on a grand scale, even for me.

"I'm not sure I want to fly a kite today," I said.

"It's a beautiful day," Hassan said.

I shifted on my feet. Tried to peel my gaze away from our rooftop. "I don't
know. Maybe we should go home."

Then he stepped toward me and, in a low voice, said something that
scared me a little. "Remember, Amir agha. There's no monster, just a beautiful
day." How could I be such an open book to him when, half the time, I had no idea
what was milling around in his head? I was the one who went to school, the one
who could read, write. I was the smart one. Hassan couldn't read a first grade
textbook but he'd read me plenty. That was a little unsettling, but also sort of
comfortable to have someone who always knew what you needed.

"No monster," I said, feeling a little better, to my own surprise.

He smiled. "No monster."

"Are you sure?"

He closed his eyes. Nodded.

I looked to the kids scampering down the street, flinging snowballs. "It is
a beautiful day, isn't it?"

"Let's fly," he said.

It occurred to me then that maybe Hassan had made up his dream. Was
that possible? I decided it wasn't. Hassan wasn't that smart. I wasn't that smart.
But made up or not, the silly dream had lifted some of my anxiety. Maybe I
should take off my shirt, take a swim in the lake. Why not? "Let's do it," I said.

Hassan's face brightened. "Good," he said. He lifted our kite, red with
yellow borders, and, just beneath where the central and cross spars met, marked
with Saifo's unmistakable signature. He licked his finger and held it up, tested the
wind, then ran in its direction--on those rare occasions we flew kites in the
summer, he'd kick up dust to see which way the wind blew it. The spool rolled in
my hands until Hassan stopped, about fifty feet away. He held the kite high over
his head, like an Olympic athlete showing his gold medal. I jerked the string
twice, our usual signal, and Hassan tossed the kite.

Caught between Baba and the mullahs at school, I still hadn't made up my
mind about God. But when a Koran ayat I had learned in my diniyat class rose to
my lips, 1 muttered it. I took a deep breath, exhaled, and pulled on the string.
Within a minute, my kite was rocketing to the sky. It made a sound like a paper
bird flapping its wings. Hassan clapped his hands, whistled, and ran back to me. I
handed him the spool, holding on to the string, and he spun it quickly to roll the
loose string back on.

At least two dozen kites already hung in the sky, like paper sharks
roaming for prey. Within an hour, the number doubled, and red, blue, and yellow
kites glided and spun in the sky. A cold breeze wafted through my hair. The wind
was perfect for kite flying, blowing just hard enough to give some lift, make the
sweeps easier. Next to me, Hassan held the spool, his hands already bloodied by
the string.

Soon, the cutting started and the first of the defeated kites whirled out of
control. They fell from the sky like shooting stars with brilliant, rippling tails,
showering the neighborhoods below with prizes for the kite runners. I could
hear the runners now, hollering as they ran the streets. Someone shouted
reports of a fight breaking out two streets down.

I kept stealing glances at Baba sitting with Rahim Khan on the roof,
wondered what he was thinking. Was he cheering for me? Or did a part of him
enjoy watching me fail? That was the thing about kite flying: Your mind drifted
with the kite.

They were coming down all over the place now, the kites, and I was still
flying. I was still flying. My eyes kept wandering over to Baba, bundled up in his
wool sweater. Was he surprised I had lasted as long as I had? You don't keep
your eyes to the sky, you won't last much longer. I snapped my gaze back to the
sky. A red kite was closing in on me--I'd caught it just in time. I tangled a bit with
it, ended up besting him when he became impatient and tried to cut me from
below.

Up and down the streets, kite runners were returning triumphantly, their
captured kites held high. They showed them off to their parents, their friends.

But they all knew the best was yet to come. The biggest prize of all was still
flying. I sliced a bright yellow kite with a coiled white tail. It cost me another gash
on the' index finger and blood trickled down into my palm. I had Hassan hold the
string and sucked the blood dry, blotted my finger against my jeans.

Within another hour, the number of surviving kites dwindled from maybe
fifty to a dozen. I was one of them. I'd made it to the last dozen. I knew this part
of the tournament would take a while, because the guys who had lasted this long
were good-they wouldn't easily fall into simple traps like the old lift-and-dive,
Hassan's favorite trick.

By three o'clock that afternoon, tufts of clouds had drifted in and the sun
had slipped behind them. Shadows started to lengthen. The spectators on the
roofs bundled up in scarves and thick coats. We were down to a half dozen and I
was still flying. My legs ached and my neck was stiff. But with each defeated kite,'
hope grew in my heart, like snow collecting on a wall, one flake at a time.

My eyes kept returning to a blue kite that had been wreaking havoc for
the last hour.

"How many has he cut?" I asked.

"I counted eleven," Hassan said.

"Do you know whose it might be?"

Hassan clucked his tongue and tipped his chin. That was a trademark
Hassan gesture, meant he had no idea. The blue kite sliced a big purple one and
swept twice in big loops. Ten minutes later, he'd cut another two, sending hordes
of kite runners racing after them.

After another thirty minutes, only four kites remained. And I was still
flying. It seemed I could hardly make a wrong move, as if every gust of wind blew
in my favor. I'd never felt so in command, so lucky It felt intoxicating. I didn't
dare look up to the roof. Didn't dare take my eyes off the sky. I had to
concentrate, play it smart. Another fifteen minutes and what had seemed like a
laughable dream that morning had suddenly become reality: It was just me and
the other guy. The blue kite.

The tension in the air was as taut as the glass string I was tugging with my
bloody hands. People were stomping their feet, clapping, whistling, chanting,
"Boboresh! Boboresh!" Cut him! Cut him! I wondered if Baba's voice was one of

them. Music blasted. The smell of steamed mantu and fried pakora drifted from
rooftops and open doors.

But all I heard--all I willed myself to hear--was the thudding of blood in
my head. All I saw was the blue kite. All I smelled was victory. Salvation.
Redemption. If Baba was wrong and there was a God like they said in school,
then He'd let me win. I didn't know what the other guy was playing for, maybe
just bragging rights. But this was my one chance to become someone who was
looked at, not seen, listened to, not heard. If there was a God, He'd guide the
winds, let them blow for me so that, with a tug of my string, I'd cut loose my pain,
my longing. I'd endured too much, come too far. And suddenly, just like that,
hope became knowledge. I was going to win. It was just a matter of when.

It turned out to be sooner than later. A gust of wind lifted my kite and I
took advantage. Fed the string, pulled up. Looped my kite on top of the blue one.

I held position. The blue kite knew it was in trouble. It was trying desperately to
maneuver out of the jam, but I didn't let go. I held position. The crowd sensed the
end was at hand. The chorus of "Cut him! Cut him!" grew louder, like Romans
chanting for the gladiators to kill, kill!

"You're almost there, Amir agha! Almost there!" Hassan was panting.

Then the moment came. I closed my eyes and loosened my grip on the
string. It sliced my fingers again as the wind dragged it. And then... I didn't need
to hear the crowd's roar to know I didn't need to see either. Hassan was
screaming and his arm was wrapped around my neck.

"Bravo! Bravo, Amir agha!"

I opened my eyes, saw the blue kite spinning wildly like a tire come loose
from a speeding car. I blinked, tried to say something. Nothing came out.
Suddenly I was hovering, looking down on myself from above. Black leather coat,
red scarf, faded jeans. A thin boy, a little sallow, and a tad short for his twelve
years. He had narrow shoulders and a hint of dark circles around his pale hazel
eyes. The breeze rustled his light brown hair. He looked up to me and we smiled
at each other.

Then I was screaming, and everything was color and sound, everything
was alive and good. I was throwing my free arm around Hassan and we were

hopping up and down, both of us laughing, both of us weeping. "You won, Amir
agha! You won!"

"We won! We won!" was all I could say. This wasn't happening. In a
moment, I'd blink and rouse from this beautiful dream, get out of bed, march
down to the kitchen to eat breakfast with no one to talk to but Hassan. Get
dressed. Wait for Baba. Give up. Back to my old life. Then I saw Baba on our roof.
He was standing on the edge, pumping both of his fists. Hollering and clapping.
And that right there was the single greatest moment of my twelve years of life,
seeing Baba on that roof, proud of me at last.

But he was doing something now, motioning with his hands in an urgent
way. Then I understood. "Hassan, we--"

"I know," he said, breaking our embrace. "_Inshallah_, we'll celebrate later.
Right now, I'm going to run that blue kite for you," he said. He dropped the spool
and took off running, the hem of his green chapan dragging in the snow behind
him.

"Hassan!" I called. "Come back with it!"

He was already turning the street corner, his rubber boots kicking up
snow. He stopped, turned. He cupped his hands around his mouth. "For you a
thousand times over!" he said. Then he smiled his Hassan smile and disappeared
around the corner. The next time I saw him smile unabashedly like that was
twenty-six years later, in a faded Polaroid photograph.

I began to pull my kite back as people rushed to congratulate me. I shook
hands with them, said my thanks. The younger kids looked at me with an
awestruck twinkle in their eyes; I was a hero. Hands patted my back and tousled
my hair. I pulled on the string and returned every smile, but my mind was on the
blue kite.

Finally, I had my kite in hand. I wrapped the loose string that had
collected at my feet around the spool, shook a few more hands, and trotted home.
When I reached the wrought-iron gates, Ali was waiting on the other side. He
stuck his hand through the bars. "Congratulations," he said.

I gave him my kite and spool, shook his hand. "Tashakor, Ah jan.

"1 was praying for you the whole time."

"Then keep praying. We're not done yet."

I hurried back to the street. I didn't ask Ah about Baba. I didn't want to see
him yet. In my head, I had it all planned: I'd make a grand entrance, a hero,
prized trophy in my bloodied hands. Heads would turn and eyes would lock.
Rostam and Sohrab sizing each other up. A dramatic moment of silence. Then the
old warrior would walk to the young one, embrace him, acknowledge his
worthiness. Vindication. Salvation. Redemption. And then? Well... happily ever
after, of course. What else? The streets of Wazir Akbar Khan were numbered and
set at right angles to each other like a grid. It was a new neighborhood then, still
developing, with empty lots of land and half-constructed homes on every street
between compounds surrounded by eight-foot walls. I ran up and down every
street, looking for Hassan. Everywhere, people were busy folding chairs, packing
food and utensils after a long day of partying. Some, still sitting on their rooftops,
shouted their congratulations to me.

Four streets south of ours, I saw Omar, the son of an engineer who was a
friend of Baba's. He was dribbling a soccer ball with his brother on the front lawn
of their house. Omar was a pretty good guy. We'd been classmates in fourth
grade, and one time he'd given me a fountain pen, the kind you had to load with a
cartridge.

"I heard you won, Amir," he said. "Congratulations."

"Thanks. Have you seen Hassan?"

"Your Hazara?"

I nodded.

Omar headed the ball to his brother. "I hear he's a great kite runner." His
brother headed the ball back to him. Omar caught it, tossed it up and down.

"Although I've always wondered how he manages. I mean, with those tight little
eyes, how does he see anything?"

His brother laughed, a short burst, and asked for the ball. Omar ignored

him.

"Have you seen him?"

Omar flicked a thumb over his shoulder, pointing southwest. "I saw him
running toward the bazaar awhile ago."

"Thanks." I scuttled away.

By the time I reached the marketplace, the sun had almost sunk behind
the hills and dusk had painted the sky pink and purple. A few blocks away, from
the Haji Yaghoub Mosque, the mullah bellowed azan, calling for the faithful to
unroll their rugs and bow their heads west in prayer. Hassan never missed any of
the five daily prayers. Even when we were out playing, he'd excuse himself, draw
water from the well in the yard, wash up, and disappear into the hut. He'd come
out a few minutes later, smiling, find me sitting against the wall or perched on a
tree. He was going to miss prayer tonight, though, because of me.

The bazaar was emptying quickly, the merchants finishing up their
haggling for the day. I trotted in the mud between rows of closely packed
cubicles where you could buy a freshly slaughtered pheasant in one stand and a
calculator from the adjacent one. I picked my way through the dwindling crowd,
the lame beggars dressed in layers of tattered rags, the vendors with rugs on
their shoulders, the cloth merchants and butchers closing shop for the day. I
found no sign of Hassan.

I stopped by a dried fruit stand, described Hassan to an old merchant
loading his mule with crates of pine seeds and raisins. He wore a powder blue
turban.

He paused to look at me for a long time before answering. "I might have
seen him."

Which way did he go?

He eyed me up and down. "What is a boy like you doing here at this time
of the day looking for a Hazara?" His glance lingered admiringly on my leather
coat and my jeans-cowboy pants, we used to call them. In Afghanistan, owning
anything American, especially if it wasn't secondhand, was a sign of wealth.

"I need to find him, Agha."

"What is he to you?" he said. I didn't see the point of his question, but I
reminded myself that impatience wasn't going to make him tell me any faster.

"He's our servant's son," 1 said.

The old man raised a pepper gray eyebrow. "He is? Lucky Hazara, having
such a concerned master. His father should get on his knees, sweep the dust at
your feet with his eyelashes."

"Are you going to tell me or not?"

He rested an arm on the mule's back, pointed south. "I think I saw the boy
you described running that way. He had a kite in his hand. A blue one."

"He did?" I said. For you a thousand times over, he'd promised. Good old
Hassan.

Good old reliable Hassan. He'd kept his promise and run the last kite for
me.

"Of course, they've probably caught him by now," the old merchant said,
grunting and loading another box on the mule's back.

Who?

"The other boys," he said. "The ones chasing him. They were dressed like
you." He glanced to the sky and sighed. "Now, run along, you're making me late
for nainaz."

But I was already scrambling down the lane.

For the next few minutes, I scoured the bazaar in vain. Maybe the old
merchant's eyes had betrayed him. Except he'd seen the blue kite. The thought of
getting my hands on that kite... I poked my head behind every lane, every shop.
No sign of Hassan.

I had begun to worry that darkness would fall before I found Hassan
when I heard voices from up ahead. I'd reached a secluded, muddy road. It ran
perpendicular to the end of the main thoroughfare bisecting the bazaar. I turned
onto the rutted track and followed the voices. My boot squished in mud with
every step and my breath puffed out in white clouds before me. The narrow path
ran parallel on one side to a snow-filled ravine through which a stream may have
tumbled in the spring. To my other side stood rows of snow-burdened cypress
trees peppered among flat-topped clay houses-no more than mud shacks in
most cases-separated by narrow alleys.

I heard the voices again, louder this time, coming from one of the alleys. I
crept close to the mouth of the alley. Held my breath. Peeked around the corner.

Hassan was standing at the blind end of the alley in a defiant stance: fists
curled, legs slightly apart. Behind him, sitting on piles of scrap and rubble, was
the blue kite. My key to Baba's heart.

Blocking Hassan's way out of the alley were three boys, the same three
from that day on the hill, the day after Daoud Khan's coup, when Hassan had
saved us with his slingshot. Wali was standing on one side, Kamal on the other,
and in the middle, Assef. I felt my body clench up, and something cold rippled up
my spine. Assef seemed relaxed, confident. He was twirling his brass knuckles.
The other two guys shifted nervously on their feet, looking from Assef to Hassan,
like they'd cornered some kind of wild animal that only Assef could tame.

"Where is your slingshot, Hazara?" Assef said, turning the brass knuckles
in his hand. "What was it you said? 'They'll have to call you One-Eyed Assef.'
That's right. One-Eyed Assef. That was clever. Really clever. Then again, it's easy
to be clever when you're holding a loaded weapon."

I realized 1 still hadn't breathed out. I exhaled, slowly, quietly. I felt
paralyzed. I watched them close in on the boy I'd grown up with, the boy whose
harelipped face had been my first memory.

"But today is your lucky day, Hazara," Assef said. He had his back to me,
but I would have bet he was grinning. "I'm in a mood to forgive. What do you say
to that, boys?"

"That's generous," Kamal blurted, "Especially after the rude manners he
showed us last time." He was trying to sound like Assef, except there was a
tremor in his voice. Then I understood: He wasn't afraid of Hassan, not really. He
was afraid because he had no idea what Assef had in mind.

Assef waved a dismissive hand. "Bakhshida. Forgiven. It's done." His voice
dropped a little. "Of course, nothing is free in this world, and my pardon comes
with a small price."

"That's fair," Kamal said.

"Nothing is free," Wali added.

"You're a lucky Hazara," Assef said, taking a step toward Hassan. "Because
today, it's only going to cost you that blue kite. A fair deal, boys, isn't it?"

"More than fair," Kamal said.

Even from where I was standing, I could see the fear creeping into
Hassan's eyes, but he shook his head. "Amir agha won the tournament and I ran
this kite for him. I ran it fairly. This is his kite."

"A loyal Hazara. Loyal as a dog," Assef said. Kamal's laugh was a shrill,
nervous sound.

"But before you sacrifice yourself for him, think about this: Would he do
the same for you? Have you ever wondered why he never includes you in games
when he has guests? Why he only plays with you when no one else is around? I'll
tell you why, Hazara. Because to him, you're nothing but an ugly pet. Something
he can play with when he's bored, something he can kick when he's angry. Don't
ever fool yourself and think you're something more."

"Amir agha and I are friends," Hassan said. He looked flushed.

"Friends?" Assef said, laughing. "You pathetic fool! Someday you'll wake
up from your little fantasy and learn just how good of a friend he is. Now, has!
Enough of this. Give us that kite."

Hassan stooped and picked up a rock.

Assef flinched. He began to take a step back, stopped. "Last chance,
Hazara."

Hassan's answer was to cock the arm that held the rock.

"Whatever you wish." Assef unbuttoned his winter coat, took it off, folded
it slowly and deliberately. He placed it against the wall.

I opened my mouth, almost said something. Almost. The rest of my life
might have turned out differently if I had. But I didn't. I just watched. Paralyzed.

Assef motioned with his hand, and the other two boys separated, forming
a half circle, trapping Hassan in the alley.

"I've changed my mind," Assef said. "I'm letting you keep the kite, Hazara.
I'll let you keep it so it will always remind you of what I'm about to do."

Then he charged. Hassan hurled the rock. It struck Assef in the forehead.
Assef yelped as he flung himself at Hassan, knocking him to the ground. Wali and
Kamal followed.

I bit on my fist. Shut my eyes.

A MEMORY: Did you know Hassan and you fed from the same breast? Did you
know that, Amir agha? Sakina, her name was. She was a fair, blue-eyed Hazara
woman from Bamiyan and she sang you old wedding songs. They say there is a
brotherhood between people who've fed from the same breast. Did you know
that? A memory: "A rupia each, children. Just one rupia each and I will part the
curtain of truth." The old man sits against a mud wall. His sightless eyes are like
molten silver embedded in deep, twin craters.

Hunched over his cane, the fortune-teller runs a gnarled hand across the
surface of his deflated cheeks. Cups it before us. "Not much to ask for the truth, is
it, a rupia each?" Hassan drops a coin in the leathery palm. I drop mine too. "In
the name of Allah most beneficent, most merciful," the old fortune-teller
whispers. He takes Hassan's hand first, strokes the palm with one horn-like
fingernail, round and round, round and round. The finger then floats to Hassan's
face and makes a dry, scratchy sound as it slowly traces the curve of his cheeks,
the outline of his ears. The calloused pads of his fingers brush against Hassan's
eyes. The hand stops there. Lingers. A shadow passes across the old man's face.
Hassan and I exchange a glance. The old man takes Hassan's hand and puts the
rupia back in Hassan's palm. He turns to me. "How about you, young friend?" he
says. On the other side of the wall, a rooster crows. The old man reaches for my
hand and I withdraw it.

A dream: I am lost in a snowstorm. The wind shrieks, blows stinging
sheets of snow into my eyes. I stagger through layers of shifting white. I call for
help but the wind drowns my cries. I fall and lie panting on the snow, lost in the
white, the wind wailing in my ears. I watch the snow erase my fresh footprints.
I'm a ghost now, I think, a ghost with no footprints. I cry out again, hope fading
like my footprints. But this time, a muffled reply. I shield my eyes and manage to
sit up. Out of the swaying curtains of snow, I catch a glimpse of movement, a
flurry of color. A familiar shape materializes. A hand reaches out for me. I see
deep, parallel gashes across the palm, blood dripping, staining the snow. I take
the hand and suddenly the snow is gone. We're standing in a field of apple green

grass with soft wisps of clouds drifting above. I look up and see the clear sky is
filled with kites, green, yellow, red, orange. They shimmer in the afternoon light.

A HAVOC OF SCRAP AND RUBBLE littered the alley. Worn bicycle tires, bottles
with peeled labels, ripped up magazines, yellowed newspapers, all scattered
amid a pile of bricks and slabs of cement. A rusted cast-iron stove with a gaping
hole on its side tilted against a wall. But there were two things amid the garbage
that I couldn't stop looking at: One was the blue kite resting against the wall,
close to the cast-iron stove; the other was Hassan's brown corduroy pants
thrown on a heap of eroded bricks.

"I don't know," Wali was saying. "My father says it's sinful." He sounded
unsure, excited, scared, all at the same time. Hassan lay with his chest pinned to
the ground. Kamal and Wali each gripped an arm, twisted and bent at the elbow
so that Hassan's hands were pressed to his back. Assef was standing over them,
the heel of his snow boots crushing the back of Hassan's neck.

"Your father won't find out," Assef said. "And there's nothing sinful about
teaching a lesson to a disrespectful donkey."

"I don't know," Wali muttered.

"Suit yourself," Assef said. He turned to Kamal. "What about you?"

H

I... well...

ii

"It's just a Hazara," Assef said. But Kamal kept looking away.

"Fine," Assef snapped. "All I want you weaklings to do is hold him down.
Can you manage that?"

Wali and Kamal nodded. They looked relieved.

Assef knelt behind Hassan, put his hands on Hassan's hips and lifted his
bare buttocks. He kept one hand on Hassan's back and undid his own belt buckle
with his free hand. He unzipped his jeans. Dropped his underwear. He positioned
himself behind Hassan. Hassan didn't struggle. Didn't even whimper. He moved
his head slightly and I caught a glimpse of his face. Saw the resignation in it. It
was a look I had seen before. It was the look of the lamb.

TOMORROW IS THE TENTH DAY of Dhul-Hij jah, the last month of the Muslim
calendar, and the first of three days of Eid Al-Adha, or Eid-e-Qorban, as Afghans
call it--a day to celebrate how the prophet Ibrahim almost sacrificed his own son
for God. Baba has handpicked the sheep again this year, a powder white one with
crooked black ears.

We all stand in the backyard, Hassan, Ali, Baba, and I. The mullah recites
the prayer, rubs his beard. Baba mutters, Get on with it, under his breath. He
sounds annoyed with the endless praying, the ritual of making the meat halal.
Baba mocks the story behind this Eid, like he mocks everything religious. But he
respects the tradition of Eid-e-Qorban. The custom is to divide the meat in thirds,
one for the family, one for friends, and one for the poor. Every year, Baba gives it
all to the poor. The rich are fat enough already, he says.

The mullah finishes the prayer. Ameen. He picks up the kitchen knife with
the long blade. The custom is to not let the sheep see the knife. Ali feeds the
animal a cube of sugar--another custom, to make death sweeter. The sheep kicks,
but not much. The mullah grabs it under its jaw and places the blade on its neck.
Just a second before he slices the throat in one expert motion, I see the sheep's
eyes. It is a look that will haunt my dreams for weeks. I don't know why I watch
this yearly ritual in our backyard; my nightmares persist long after the
bloodstains on the grass have faded. But I always watch. I watch because of that
look of acceptance in the animal's eyes. Absurdly, I imagine the animal
understands. 1 imagine the animal sees that its imminent demise is for a higher
purpose. This is the look...

I STOPPED WATCHING, turned away from the alley. Something warm was
running down my wrist. I blinked, saw I was still biting down on my fist, hard

enough to draw blood from the knuckles. I realized something else. I was
weeping. From just around the corner, I could hear Assef's quick, rhythmic
grunts.

I had one last chance to make a decision. One final opportunity to decide
who I was going to be. I could step into that alley, stand up for Hassan--the way
he'd stood up for me all those times in the past--and accept whatever would
happen to me. Or I could run.

In the end, I ran.

I ran because I was a coward. I was afraid of Assef and what he would do

to me.

I was afraid of getting hurt. That's what I told myself as I turned my back
to the alley, to Hassan. That's what I made myself believe. I actually aspired to
cowardice, because the alternative, the real reason I was running, was that Assef
was right: Nothing was free in this world. Maybe Hassan was the price I had to
pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba. Was it a fair price? The answer floated to
my conscious mind before I could thwart it: He was just a Hazara, wasn't he? I
ran back the way I'd come. Ran back to the all but deserted bazaar. I lurched to a
cubicle and leaned against the padlocked swinging doors. I stood there panting,
sweating, wishing things had turned out some other way.

About fifteen minutes later, I heard voices and running footfalls. I
crouched behind the cubicle and watched Assef and the other two sprinting by,
laughing as they hurried down the deserted lane. I forced myself to wait ten
more minutes. Then I walked back to the rutted track that ran along the snow-
filled ravine. I squinted in the dimming light and spotted Hassan walking slowly
toward me. I met him by a leafless birch tree on the edge of the ravine.

He had the blue kite in his hands; that was the first thing I saw. And I can't
lie now and say my eyes didn't scan it for any rips. His chapan had mud smudges
down the front and his shirt was ripped just below the collar. He stopped.

Swayed on his feet like he was going to collapse. Then he steadied himself.

Handed me the kite.

"Where were you? I looked for you," I said. Speaking those words was like
chewing on a rock.

Hassan dragged a sleeve across his face, wiped snot and tears. I waited for
him to say something, but we just stood there in silence, in the fading light. I was
grateful for the early-evening shadows that fell on Hassan's face and concealed
mine. I was glad I didn't have to return his gaze. Did he know I knew? And if he
knew, then what would I see if I did look in his eyes? Blame? Indignation? Or,

God forbid, what I feared most: guileless devotion? That, most of all, I couldn't
bear to see.

He began to say something and his voice cracked. He closed his mouth,
opened it, and closed it again. Took a step back. Wiped his face. And that was as
close as Hassan and I ever came to discussing what had happened in the alley. I
thought he might burst into tears, but, to my relief, he didn't, and I pretended I
hadn't heard the crack in his voice. Just like I pretended I hadn't seen the dark
stain in the seat of his pants. Or those tiny drops that fell from between his legs
and stained the snow black.

"Agha sahib will worry," was all he said. He turned from me and limped

away.

IT HAPPENED JUST THE WAY I'd imagined. I opened the door to the smoky
study and stepped in. Baba and Rahim Khan were drinking tea and listening to
the news crackling on the radio. Their heads turned. Then a smile played on my
father's lips. He opened his arms. I put the kite down and walked into his thick
hairy arms. I buried my face in the warmth of his chest and wept. Baba held me
close to him, rocking me back and forth. In his arms, I forgot what I'd done. And
that was good.

EIGHT

For a week, I barely saw Hassan. I woke up to find toasted bread, brewed tea, and
a boiled egg already on the kitchen table. My clothes for the day were ironed and
folded, left on the cane-seat chair in the foyer where Hassan usually did his
ironing. He used to wait for me to sit at the breakfast table before he started
ironing-that way, we could talk. Used to sing too, over the hissing of the iron,
sang old Hazara songs about tulip fields. Now only the folded clothes greeted me.
That, and a breakfast I hardly finished anymore.

One overcast morning, as I was pushing the boiled egg around on my
plate, Ali walked in cradling a pile of chopped wood. I asked him where Hassan
was.

"He went back to sleep," Ali said, kneeling before the stove. He pulled the
little square door open.

Would Hassan be able to play today? Ali paused with a log in his hand. A
worried look crossed his face. "Lately, it seems all he wants to do is sleep. He
does his chores-I see to that-but then he just wants to crawl under his blanket.
Can I ask you something?"

"If you have to."

"After that kite tournament, he came home a little bloodied and his shirt
was torn. I asked him what had happened and he said it was nothing, that he'd
gotten into a little scuffle with some kids over the kite."

I didn't say anything. Just kept pushing the egg around on my plate.

"Did something happen to him, Amir agha? Something he's not telling

me?"

I shrugged. "How should I know?

"You would tell me, nay? _Inshallah_, you would tell me if something had
happened?"

"Like I said, how should I know what's wrong with him?" I snapped.
"Maybe he's sick. People get sick all the time, Ah. Now, am I going to freeze to
death or are you planning on lighting the stove today?"

THAT NIGHT I asked Baba if we could go to Jalalabad on Friday. He was rocking
on the leather swivel chair behind his desk, reading a newspaper. He put it down,
took off the reading glasses I disliked so much--Baba wasn't old, not at all, and he
had lots of years left to live, so why did he have to wear those stupid glasses?
"Why not!" he said. Lately, Baba agreed to everything I asked. Not only that, just
two nights before, he'd asked me if I wanted to see _E1 Cid_ with Charlton Heston
at Cinema Aryana. "Do you want to ask Hassan to come along to Jalalabad?"

Why did Baba have to spoil it like that? "He's mazreez," I said. Not feeling

well.

"Really?" Baba stopped rocking in his chair. "What's wrong with him?"

I gave a shrug and sank in the sofa by the fireplace. "He's got a cold or
something. Ali says he's sleeping it off."

"I haven't seen much of Hassan the last few days," Baba said. "That's all it
is, then, a cold?" I couldn't help hating the way his brow furrowed with worry.

"Just a cold. So are we going Friday, Baba?"

"Yes, yes," Baba said, pushing away from the desk. "Too bad about Hassan.
I thought you might have had more fun if he came."

"Well, the two of us can have fun together," I said. Baba smiled. Winked.
"Dress warm," he said.

IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN just the two of us-that was the way, I wanted it--but by
Wednesday night, Baba had managed to invite another two dozen people. He
called his cousin Homayoun--he was actually Baba's second cousin--and
mentioned he was going to Jalalabad on Friday, and Homayoun, who had studied
engineering in France and had a house in Jalalabad, said he'd love to have
everyone over, he'd bring the kids, his two wives, and, while he was at it, cousin
Shafiqa and her family were visiting from Herat, maybe she'd like to tag along,
and since she was staying with cousin Nader in Kabul, his family would have to
be invited as well even though Homayoun and Nader had a bit of a feud going,
and if Nader was invited, surely his brother Faruq had to be asked too or his
feelings would be hurt and he might not invite them to his daughter's wedding
next month and...

We filled three vans. I rode with Baba, Rahim Khan, Kaka Homayoun--
Baba had taught me at a young age to call any older male Kaka, or Uncle, and any
older female, Khala, or Aunt. Kaka Homayoun's two wives rode with us too--the
pinch-faced older one with the warts on her hands and the younger one who
always smelled of perfume and danced with her eyes closed-as did Kaka
Homayoun's twin girls. I sat in the back row, carsick and dizzy, sandwiched
between the seven-year-old twins who kept reaching over my lap to slap at each
other. The road to Jalalabad is a two-hour trek through mountain roads winding
along a steep drop, and my stomach lurched with each hairpin turn. Everyone in
the van was talking, talking loudly and at the same time, nearly shrieking, which
is how Afghans talk. I asked one of the twins-Fazila or Karima, I could never tell
which was which-if she'd trade her window seat with me so I could get fresh air
on account of my car sickness. She stuck her tongue out and said no. I told her
that was fine, but I couldn't be held accountable for vomiting on her new dress. A
minute later, I was leaning out the window. I watched the cratered road rise and
fall, whirl its tail around the mountainside, counted the multicolored trucks
packed with squatting men lumbering past. I tried closing my eyes, letting the
wind slap at my cheeks, opened my mouth to swallow the clean air. I still didn't
feel better. A finger poked me in the side. It was Fazila/Karima.

What?" I said.

"I was just telling everyone about the tournament," Baba said from behind
the wheel. Kaka Homayoun and his wives were smiling at me from the middle
row of seats.

"There must have been a hundred kites in the sky that day?" Baba said. "Is
that about right, Amir?"

"I guess so," I mumbled.

"A hundred kites, Homayoun jan. No _laaf_. And the only one still flying at
the end of the day was Amir's. He has the last kite at home, a beautiful blue kite.
Hassan and Amir ran it together."

"Congratulations," Kaka Homayoun said. His first wife, the one with the
warts, clapped her hands. "Wah wah, Amir jan, we're all so proud of you!" she
said. The younger wife joined in. Then they were all clapping, yelping their
praises, telling me how proud I'd made them all. Only Rahim Khan, sitting in the
passenger seat next to Baba, was silent. He was looking at me in an odd way.

"Please pull over, Baba," I said.

"What?"

"Getting sick," I muttered, leaning across the seat, pressing against Kaka
Homayoun's daughters.

Fazila/Karima's face twisted. "Pull over, Kaka! His face is yellow! I don't
want him throwing up on my new dress!" she squealed.

Baba began to pull over, but I didn't make it. A few minutes later, I was
sitting on a rock on the side of the road as they aired out the van. Baba was
smoking with Kaka Homayoun who was telling Fazila/Karima to stop crying;
he'd buy her another dress in Jalalabad. I closed my eyes, turned my face to the
sun. Little shapes formed behind my eyelids, like hands playing shadows on the
wall. They twisted, merged, formed a single image: Hassan's brown corduroy
pants discarded on a pile of old bricks in the alley.

KARA HOMAYOUN'S WHITE, two-story house in Jalalabad had a balcony
overlooking a large, walled garden with apple and persimmon trees. There were
hedges that, in the summer, the gardener shaped like animals, and a swimming
pool with emerald colored tiles. I sat on the edge of the pool, empty save for a
layer of slushy snow at the bottom, feet dangling in. Kaka Homayoun's kids were
playing hide-and-seek at the other end of the yard. The women were cooking and
I could smell onions frying already, could hear the phht-phht of a pressure
cooker, music, laughter. Baba, Rahim Khan, Kaka Homayoun, and Kaka Nader
were sitting on the balcony, smoking. Kaka Homayoun was telling them he'd
brought the projector along to show his slides of France. Ten years since he'd
returned from Paris and he was still showing those stupid slides.

It shouldn't have felt this way. Baba and I were finally friends. We'd gone
to the zoo a few days before, seen Marjan the lion, and I had hurled a pebble at
the bear when no one was watching. We'd gone to Dadkhoda's Kabob House
afterward, across from Cinema Park, had lamb kabob with freshly baked _naan_
from the tandoor. Baba told me stories of his travels to India and Russia, the
people he had met, like the armless, legless couple in Bombay who'd been
married forty-seven years and raised eleven children. That should have been fun,
spending a day like that with Baba, hearing his stories. I finally had what I'd
wanted all those years. Except now that I had it, I felt as empty as this unkempt
pool I was dangling my legs into.

The wives and daughters served dinner-rice, kofta, and chicken _qurma_-
-at sundown. We dined the traditional way, sitting on cushions around the room,
tablecloth spread on the floor, eating with our hands in groups of four or five
from common platters. I wasn't hungry but sat down to eat anyway with Baba,
Kaka Faruq, and Kaka Homayoun's two boys. Baba, who'd had a few scotches
before dinner, was still ranting about the kite tournament, how I'd outlasted
them all, how I'd come home with the last kite. His booming voice dominated the
room. People raised their heads from their platters, called out their
congratulations. Kaka Faruq patted my back with his clean hand. I felt like
sticking a knife in my eye.

Later, well past midnight, after a few hours of poker between Baba and
his cousins, the men lay down to sleep on parallel mattresses in the same room
where we'd dined. The women went upstairs. An hour later, I still couldn't sleep.
I kept tossing and turning as my relatives grunted, sighed, and snored in their
sleep. I sat up. A wedge of moonlight streamed in through the window.

"I watched Hassan get raped," I said to no one. Baba stirred in his sleep.
Kaka Homayoun grunted. A part of me was hoping someone would wake up and
hear, so I wouldn't have to live with this lie anymore. But no one woke up and in
the silence that followed, I understood the nature of my new curse: I was going
to get away with it.

I thought about Hassan's dream, the one about us swimming in the lake.
There is no monster, he'd said, just water. Except he'd been wrong about that.
There was a monster in the lake. It had grabbed Hassan by the ankles, dragged
him to the murky bottom. I was that monster.

That was the night I became an insomniac.

I DIDN'T SPEAK TO HASSAN until the middle of the next week. I had just half-
eaten my lunch and Hassan was doing the dishes. I was walking upstairs, going to
my room, when Hassan asked if I wanted to hike up the hill. I said I was tired.
Hassan looked tired too-he'd lost weight and gray circles had formed under his
puffed-up eyes. But when he asked again, I reluctantly agreed.

We trekked up the hill, our boots squishing in the muddy snow. Neither
one of us said anything. We sat under our pomegranate tree and I knew I'd made
a mistake. I shouldn't have come up the hill. The words I'd carved on the tree
trunk with Ali's kitchen knife, Amir and Hassan: The Sultans of Kabul... I couldn't
stand looking at them now.

He asked me to read to him from the _Shahnamah_ and I told him I'd
changed my mind. Told him 1 just wanted to go back to my room. He looked away
and shrugged. We walked back down the way we'd gone up in silence. And for
the first time in my life, I couldn't wait for spring.

MY MEMORY OF THE REST of that winter of 1975 is pretty hazy. I remember I
was fairly happy when Baba was home. We'd eat together, go to see a film, visit

Kaka Homayoun or Kaka Faruq. Sometimes Rahim Khan came over and Baba let
me sit in his study and sip tea with them. He'd even have me read him some of
my stories. It was good and I even believed it would last. And Baba believed it
too, I think. We both should have known better. For at least a few months after
the kite tournament, Baba and I immersed ourselves in a sweet illusion, saw each
other in a way that we never had before. We'd actually deceived ourselves into
thinking that a toy made of tissue paper, glue, and bamboo could somehow close
the chasm between us.

But when Baba was out--and he was out a lot—I closed myself in my room.
I read a book every couple of days, wrote stories, learned to draw horses. I'd hear
Hassan shuffling around the kitchen in the morning, hear the clinking of
silverware, the whistle of the teapot. I'd wait to hear the door shut and only then
I would walk down to eat. On my calendar, I circled the date of the first day of
school and began a countdown.

To my dismay, Hassan kept trying to rekindle things between us. I
remember the last time. I was in my room, reading an abbreviated Farsi
translation of Ivanhoe, when he knocked on my door.

"What is it?"

"I'm going to the baker to buy _naan_," he said from the other side. "I was
wondering if you... if you wanted to come along."

"I think I'm just going to read," I said, rubbing my temples. Lately, every
time Hassan was around, I was getting a headache.

"It's a sunny day," he said.

"I can see that."

"Might be fun to go for a walk."

'You go.

"I wish you'd come along," he said. Paused. Something thumped against
the door, maybe his forehead. "I don't know what I've done, Amir agha. I wish
you'd tell me. I don't know why we don't play anymore."

"You haven't done anything, Hassan. Just go."

"You can tell me, I'll stop doing it."

I buried my head in my lap, squeezed my temples with my knees, like a

vice.

"I'll tell you what I want you to stop doing," I said, eyes pressed shut.

"Anything."

"I want you to stop harassing me. I want you to go away," I snapped. I
wished he would give it right back to me, break the door open and tell me off--it
would have made things easier, better. But he didn't do anything like that, and
when I opened the door minutes later, he wasn't there. I fell on my bed, buried
my head under the pillow, and cried.

HASSAN MILLED ABOUT the periphery of my life after that. I made sure our
paths crossed as little as possible, planned my day that way. Because when he
was around, the oxygen seeped out of the room. My chest tightened and I
couldn't draw enough air; I'd stand there, gasping in my own little airless bubble
of atmosphere. But even when he wasn't around, he was. He was there in the
hand-washed and ironed clothes on the cane-seat chair, in the warm slippers left
outside my door, in the wood already burning in the stove when I came down for
breakfast. Everywhere I turned, I saw signs of his loyalty, his goddamn
unwavering loyalty.

Early that spring, a few days before the new school year started, Baba and
I were planting tulips in the garden. Most of the snow had melted and the hills in
the north were already dotted with patches of green grass. It was a cool, gray

morning, and Baba was squatting next to me, digging the soil and planting the
bulbs I handed to him. He was telling me how most people thought it was better
to plant tulips in the fall and how that wasn't true, when I came right out and
said it. "Baba, have you ever thought about getting new servants?"

He dropped the tulip bulb and buried the trowel in the dirt. Took off his
gardening gloves. I'd startled him. "Chi? What did you say?"

"I was just wondering, that's all."

"Why would I ever want to do that?" Baba said curtly.

"You wouldn't, I guess. It was just a question," I said, my voice fading to a
murmur. I was already sorry I'd said it.

"Is this about you and Hassan? I know there's something going on
between you two, but whatever it is, you have to deal with it, not me. I'm staying
out of it."

"I'm sorry, Baba."

He put on his gloves again. "I grew up with Ali," he said through clenched
teeth. "My father took him in, he loved Ali like his own son. Forty years Ali's been
with my family. Forty goddamn years. And you think I'm just going to throw him
out?" He turned to me now, his face as red as a tulip. "I've never laid a hand on
you, Amir, but you ever say that again..." He looked away, shaking his head. "You
bring me shame. And Hassan... Hassan's not going anywhere, do you
understand?"

I looked down and picked up a fistful of cool soil. Let it pour between my
fingers.

"I said, Do you understand?" Baba roared.

I flinched. "Yes, Baba.

"Hassan's not going anywhere," Baba snapped. He dug a new hole with
the trowel, striking the dirt harder than he had to. "He's staying right here with
us, where he belongs. This is his home and we're his family. Don't you ever ask
me that question again!"

"1 won't, Baba. I'm sorry."

We planted the rest of the tulips in silence.

I was relieved when school started that next week. Students with new
notebooks and sharpened pencils in hand ambled about the courtyard, kicking
up dust, chatting in groups, waiting for the class captains' whistles. Baba drove
down the dirt lane that led to the entrance. The school was an old two-story
building with broken windows and dim, cobblestone hallways, patches of its
original dull yellow paint still showing between sloughing chunks of plaster.
Most of the boys walked to school, and Baba's black Mustang drew more than
one envious look. I should have been beaming with pride when he dropped me
off-the old me would have-but all I could muster was a mild form of
embarrassment. That and emptiness. Baba drove away without saying good-bye.

I bypassed the customary comparing of kite-fighting scars and stood in
line. The bell rang and we marched to our assigned class, filed in in pairs. I sat in
the back row. As the Farsi teacher handed out our textbooks, I prayed for a heavy
load of homework.

School gave me an excuse to stay in my room for long hours. And, for a
while, it took my mind off what had happened that winter, what I had let happen.
For a few weeks, I preoccupied myself with gravity and momentum, atoms and
cells, the Anglo-Afghan wars, instead of thinking about Hassan and what had
happened to him. But, always, my mind returned to the alley. To Hassan's brown
corduroy pants lying on the bricks. To the droplets of blood staining the snow
dark red, almost black.

One sluggish, hazy afternoon early that summer, I asked Hassan to go up
the hill with me. Told him I wanted to read him a new story I'd written. He was
hanging clothes to dry in the yard and I saw his eagerness in the harried way he
finished the job.

We climbed the hill, making small talk. He asked about school, what I was
learning, and I talked about my teachers, especially the mean math teacher who
punished talkative students by sticking a metal rod between their fingers and
then squeezing them together. Hassan winced at that, said he hoped I'd never
have to experience it. I said I'd been lucky so far, knowing that luck had nothing
to do with it. I had done my share of talking in class too. But my father was rich
and everyone knew him, so I was spared the metal rod treatment.

We sat against the low cemetery wall under the shade thrown by the
pomegranate tree. In another month or two, crops of scorched yellow weeds
would blanket the hillside, but that year the spring showers had lasted longer
than usual, nudging their way into early summer, and the grass was still green,
peppered with tangles of wildflowers. Below us, Wazir Akbar Khan's white
walled, flat-topped houses gleamed in the sunshine, the laundry hanging on
clotheslines in their yards stirred by the breeze to dance like butterflies.

We had picked a dozen pomegranates from the tree. I unfolded the story
I'd brought along, turned to the first page, then put it down. I stood up and
picked up an overripe pomegranate that had fallen to the ground.

"What would you do if I hit you with this?" I said, tossing the fruit up and

down.

Hassan's smile wilted. He looked older than I'd remembered. No, not
older, old. Was that possible? Lines had etched into his tanned face and creases
framed his eyes, his mouth. I might as well have taken a knife and carved those
lines myself.

"What would you do?" I repeated.

The color fell from his face. Next to him, the stapled pages of the story I'd
promised to read him fluttered in the breeze. I hurled the pomegranate at him. It
struck him in the chest, exploded in a spray of red pulp. Hassan's cry was
pregnant with surprise and pain.

Hit me back!" I snapped. Hassan looked from the stain on his chest to me.

"Get up! Hit me!" I said. Hassan did get up, but he just stood there, looking
dazed like a man dragged into the ocean by a riptide when, just a moment ago, he
was enjoying a nice stroll on the beach.

I hit him with another pomegranate, in the shoulder this time. The juice
splattered his face. "Hit me back!" I spat. "Hit me back, goddamn you!" I wished
he would. I wished he'd give me the punishment I craved, so maybe I'd finally
sleep at night. Maybe then things could return to how they used to be between
us. But Hassan did nothing as I pelted him again and again. "You're a coward!" I
said. "Nothing but a goddamn coward!"

I don't know how many times I hit him. All I know is that, when I finally
stopped, exhausted and panting, Hassan was smeared in red like he'd been shot
by a firing squad. I fell to my knees, tired, spent, frustrated.

Then Hassan did pick up a pomegranate. He walked toward me. He
opened it and crushed it against his own forehead. "There," he croaked, red
dripping down his face like blood. "Are you satisfied? Do you feel better?" He
turned around and started down the hill.

I let the tears break free, rocked back and forth on my knees.

"What am I going to do with you, Hassan? What am I going to do with
you?" But by the time the tears dried up and I trudged down the hill, I knew the
answer to that question.

I TURNED THIRTEEN that summer of 1976, Afghanistan's next to last summer of
peace and anonymity. Things between Baba and me were already cooling off
again. I think what started it was the stupid comment I'd made the day we were
planting tulips, about getting new servants. I regretted saying it--I really did--but
I think even if I hadn't, our happy little interlude would have come to an end.
Maybe not quite so soon, but it would have. By the end of the summer, the
scraping of spoon and fork against the plate had replaced dinner table chatter
and Baba had resumed retreating to his study after supper. And closing the door.
I'd gone back to thumbing through Hafez and Khayyam, gnawing my nails down
to the cuticles, writing stories. I kept the stories in a stack under my bed, keeping

them just in case, though I doubted Baba would ever again ask me to read them
to him.

Baba's motto about throwing parties was this: Invite the whole world or
it's not a party. I remember scanning over the invitation list a week before my
birthday party and not recognizing at least three-quarters of the four hundred-
plus Kakas and Khalas who were going to bring me gifts and congratulate me for
having lived to thirteen. Then I realized they weren't really coming for me. It was
my birthday, but I knew who the real star of the show was.

For days, the house was teeming with Baba's hired help. There was
Salahuddin the butcher, who showed up with a calf and two sheep in tow,
refusing payment for any of the three. He slaughtered the animals himself in the
yard by a poplar tree. "Blood is good for the tree," I remember him saying as the
grass around the poplar soaked red. Men I didn't know climbed the oak trees
with coils of small electric bulbs and meters of extension cords. Others set up
dozens of tables in the yard, spread a tablecloth on each. The night before the big
party Baba's friend Del-Muhammad, who owned a kabob house in Shar-e-Nau,
came to the house with his bags of spices. Like the butcher, Del-Muhammad-or
Dello, as Baba called him-refused payment for his services. He said Baba had
done enough for his family already. It was Rahim Khan who whispered to me, as
Dello marinated the meat, that Baba had lent Dello the money to open his
restaurant. Baba had refused repayment until Dello had shown up one day in our
driveway in a Benz and insisted he wouldn't leave until Baba took his money.

I guess in most ways, or at least in the ways in which parties are judged,
my birthday bash was a huge success. I'd never seen the house so packed. Guests
with drinks in hand were chatting in the hallways, smoking on the stairs, leaning
against doorways. They sat where they found space, on kitchen counters, in the
foyer, even under the stairwell. In the backyard, they mingled under the glow of
blue, red, and green lights winking in the trees, their faces illuminated by the
light of kerosene torches propped everywhere. Baba had had a stage built on the
balcony that overlooked the garden and planted speakers throughout the yard.
Ahmad Zahir was playing an accordion and singing on the stage over masses of
dancing bodies.

I had to greet each of the guests personally-Baba made sure of that; no
one was going to gossip the next day about how he'd raised a son with no
manners. I kissed hundreds of cheeks, hugged total strangers, thanked them for
their gifts. My face ached from the strain of my plastered smile.

I was standing with Baba in the yard near the bar when someone said,
"Happy birthday, Amir." It was Assef, with his parents. Assef's father, Mahmood,
was a short, lanky sort with dark skin and a narrow face. His mother, Tanya, was
a small, nervous woman who smiled and blinked a lot. Assef was standing
between the two of them now, grinning, looming over both, his arms resting on
their shoulders. He led them toward us, like he had brought them here. Like he
was the parent, and they his children. A wave of dizziness rushed through me.
Baba thanked them for coming.

"I picked out your present myself," Assef said. Tanya's face twitched and
her eyes flicked from Assef to me. She smiled, unconvincingly, and blinked. I
wondered if Baba had noticed.

"Still playing soccer, Assef jan?" Baba said. He'd always wanted me to be
friends with Assef.

Assef smiled. It was creepy how genuinely sweet he made it look. "Of
course, Kaka jan."

"Right wing, as I recall?"

"Actually, I switched to center forward this year," Assef said. "You get to
score more that way. We're playing the Mekro-Rayan team next week. Should be
a good match. They have some good players."

Baba nodded. "You know, I played center forward too when I was young."

"I'll bet you still could if you wanted to," Assef said. He favored Baba with
a good-natured wink.

Baba returned the wink. "I see your father has taught you his world-
famous flattering ways." He elbowed Assef's father, almost knocked the little
fellow down. Mahmood's laughter was about as convincing as Tanya's smile, and
suddenly I wondered if maybe, on some level, their son frightened them. I tried
to fake a smile, but all I could manage was a feeble up-turning of the corners of
my mouth-my stomach was turning at the sight of my father bonding with Assef.

Assef shifted his eyes to me. "Wali and Kamal are here too. They wouldn't
miss your birthday for anything," he said, laughter lurking just beneath the
surface. 1 nodded silently.

"We're thinking about playing a little game of volleyball tomorrow at my
house," Assef said. "Maybe you'll join us. Bring Hassan if you want to."

"That sounds fun," Baba said, beaming. "What do you think, Amir?"

"I don't really like volleyball," I muttered. I saw the light wink out of
Baba's eyes and an uncomfortable silence followed.

"Sorry, Assef jan," Baba said, shrugging. That stung, his apologizing for
me.

"Nay, no harm done," Assef said. "But you have an open invitation, Amir

jan.

Anyway, I heard you like to read so I brought you a book. One of my
favorites."

He extended a wrapped birthday gift to me. "Happy birthday."

He was dressed in a cotton shirt and blue slacks, a red silk tie and shiny
black loafers. He smelled of cologne and his blond hair was neatly combed back.
On the surface, he was the embodiment of every parent's dream, a strong, tall,
well-dressed and well-mannered boy with talent and striking looks, not to
mention the wit to joke with an adult. But to me, his eyes betrayed him. When I
looked into them, the facade faltered, revealed a glimpse of the madness hiding
behind them.

"Aren't you going to take it, Amir?" Baba was saying. "Huh?"

'Your present," he said testily. "Assef jan is giving you a present.

"Oh," I said. I took the box from Assef and lowered my gaze. I wished I
could be alone in my room, with my books, away from these people.

"Well?" Baba said.

"What?"

Baba spoke in a low voice, the one he took on whenever I embarrassed
him in public. "Aren't you going to thank Assef jan? That was very considerate of
him."

I wished Baba would stop calling him that. How often did he call me "Amir
jan"? "Thanks," I said. Assef's mother looked at me like she wanted to say
something, but she didn't, and I realized that neither of Assef's parents had said a
word. Before I could embarrass myself and Baba anymore--but mostly to get
away from Assef and his grin--I stepped away. "Thanks for coming," I said.

I squirmed my way through the throng of guests and slipped through the
wrought-iron gates. Two houses down from our house, there was a large, barren
dirt lot. I'd heard Baba tell Rahim Khan that a judge had bought the land and that
an architect was working on the design. For now, the lot was bare, save for dirt,
stones, and weeds.

I tore the wrapping paper from Assef's present and tilted the book cover
in the moonlight. It was a biography of Hitler. I threw it amid a tangle of weeds.

1 leaned against the neighbor's wall, slid down to the ground. 1 just sat in
the dark for a while, knees drawn to my chest, looking up at the stars, waiting for
the night to be over.

"Shouldn't you be entertaining your guests?" a familiar voice said. Rahim
Khan was walking toward me along the wall.

"They don't need me for that. Baba's there, remember?" I said. The ice in
Rahim Khan's drink clinked when he sat next to me. "I didn't know you drank."

"Turns out I do/' he said. Elbowed me playfully. "But only on the most
important occasions."

I smiled. "Thanks."

He tipped his drink to me and took a sip. He lit a cigarette, one of the
unfiltered Pakistani cigarettes he and Baba were always smoking. "Did I ever tell
you I was almost married once?"

"Really?" I said, smiling a little at the notion of Rahim Khan getting
married. I'd always thought of him as Baba's quiet alter ego, my writing mentor,
my pal, the one who never forgot to bring me a souvenir, a saughat, when he
returned from a trip abroad. But a husband? A father? He nodded. "It's true. I was
eighteen. Her name was Homaira. She was a Hazara, the daughter of our
neighbor's servants. She was as beautiful as a pari, light brown hair, big hazel
eyes... she had this laugh... I can still hear it sometimes." He twirled his glass. "We
used to meet secretly in my father's apple orchards, always after midnight when
everyone had gone to sleep. We'd walk under the trees and I'd hold her hand...
Am I embarrassing you, Amir jan?"

"A little," I said.

"It won't kill you," he said, taking another puff. "Anyway, we had this
fantasy. We'd have a great, fancy wedding and invite family and friends from
Kabul to Kandahar. I would build us a big house, white with a tiled patio and
large windows. We would plant fruit trees in the garden and grow all sorts of
flowers, have a lawn for our kids to play on. On Fridays, after _namaz_ at the
mosque, everyone would get together at our house for lunch and we'd eat in the
garden, under cherry trees, drink fresh water from the well. Then tea with candy
as we watched our kids play with their cousins..."

He took a long gulp of his scotch. Coughed. "You should have seen the look
on my father's face when I told him. My mother actually fainted. My sisters
splashed her face with water. They fanned her and looked at me as if I had slit
her throat. My brother Jalal actually went to fetch his hunting rifle before my
father stopped him." Rahim Khan barked a bitter laughter. "It was Homaira and
me against the world. And I'll tell you this, Amir jan: In the end, the world always
wins. That's just the way of things."

So what happened?

"That same day, my father put Homaira and her family on a lorry and sent
them off to Hazarajat. I never saw her again."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Probably for the best, though," Rahim Khan said, shrugging. "She would
have suffered. My family would have never accepted her as an equal. You don't
order someone to polish your shoes one day and call them 'sister' the next." He
looked at me. "You know, you can tell me anything you want, Amir jan. Anytime."

"I know," I said uncertainly. He looked at me for a long time, like he was
waiting, his black bottomless eyes hinting at an unspoken secret between us. For
a moment, I almost did tell him. Almost told him everything, but then what
would he think of me? He'd hate me, and rightfully.

"Here." He handed me something. "I almost forgot. Happy birthday." It
was a brown leather-bound notebook. I traced my fingers along the gold-colored
stitching on the borders. I smelled the leather. "For your stories," he said. I was
going to thank him when something exploded and bursts of fire lit up the sky.

"Fireworks!"

We hurried back to the house and found the guests all standing in the
yard, looking up to the sky. Kids hooted and screamed with each crackle and
whoosh. People cheered, burst into applause each time flares sizzled and
exploded into bouquets of fire. Every few seconds, the backyard lit up in sudden
flashes of red, green, and yellow.

In one of those brief bursts of light, I saw something I'll never forget:
Hassan serving drinks to Assef and Wali from a silver platter. The light winked
out, a hiss and a crackle, then another flicker of orange light: Assef grinning,
kneading Hassan in the chest with a knuckle.

Then, mercifully, darkness.

NINE

Sitting in the middle of my room the next morning, I ripped open box after box of
presents. I don't know why I even bothered, since I just gave them a joyless
glance and pitched them to the corner of the room. The pile was growing there: a
Polaroid camera, a transistor radio, an elaborate electric train set--and several
sealed envelopes containing cash. I knew I'd never spend the money or listen to
the radio, and the electric train would never trundle down its tracks in my room.

I didn't want any of it--it was all blood money; Baba would have never thrown
me a party like that if I hadn't won the tournament.

Baba gave me two presents. One was sure to become the envy of every kid
in the neighborhood: a brand new Schwinn Stingray, the king of all bicycles. Only
a handful of kids in all of Kabul owned a new Stingray and now I was one of
them. It had high-rise handlebars with black rubber grips and its famous banana
seat.

The spokes were gold colored and the steel-frame body red, like a candy
apple. Or blood. Any other kid would have hopped on the bike immediately and
taken it for a full block skid. I might have done the same a few months ago.

"You like it?" Baba said, leaning in the doorway to my room. I gave him a
sheepish grin and a quick "Thank you." I wished I could have mustered more.

"We could go for a ride," Baba said. An invitation, but only a halfhearted

one.

Maybe later. I'm a little tired,

said.

"Sure," Baba said.

"Baba?"

II

Yes?

H

"Thanks for the fireworks," I said. A thank-you, but only a halfhearted one.

"Get some rest," Baba said, walking toward his room.

The other present Baba gave me-and he didn't wait around for me to
open this one-was a wristwatch. It had a blue face with gold hands in the shape
of lightning bolts. I didn't even try it on. I tossed it on the pile of toys in the
corner. The only gift I didn't toss on that mound was Rahim Khan's leather-
bound notebook. That was the only one that didn't feel like blood money.

I sat on the edge of my bed, turned the notebook in my hands, thought
about what Rahim Khan had said about Homaira, how his father's dismissing her
had been for the best in the end. She would have suffered. Like the times Kaka
Homayoun's projector got stuck on the same slide, the same image kept flashing
in my mind over and over: Hassan, his head downcast, serving drinks to Assef
and Wali. Maybe it would be for the best. Lessen his suffering. And mine too.
Either way, this much had become clear: One of us had to go.

Later that afternoon, I took the Schwinn for its first and last spin. I
pedaled around the block a couple of times and came back. I rolled up the
driveway to the backyard where Hassan and Ali were cleaning up the mess from
last night's party. Paper cups, crumpled napkins, and empty bottles of soda
littered the yard. Ali was folding chairs, setting them along the wall. He saw me
and waved.

Salaam, Ali," I said, waving back.

He held up a finger, asking me to wait, and walked to his living quarters. A
moment later, he emerged with something in his hands. "The opportunity never
presented itself last night for Hassan and me to give you this," he said, handing
me a box. "It's modest and not worthy of you, Amir agha. But we hope you like it
still. Happy birthday."

A lump was rising in my throat. "Thank you, Ali," I said. I wished they
hadn't bought me anything. I opened the box and found a brand new
_Shahnamah_, a hardback with glossy colored illustrations beneath the passages.
Here was Ferangis gazing at her newborn son, Kai Khosrau. There was Afrasiyab
riding his horse, sword drawn, leading his army. And, of course, Rostam inflicting
a mortal wound onto his son, the warrior Sohrab. "It's beautiful," I said.

"Hassan said your copy was old and ragged, and that some of the pages
were missing," Ali said. "All the pictures are hand-drawn in this one with pen and
ink," he added proudly, eyeing a book neither he nor his son could read.

"It's lovely," I said. And it was. And, I suspected, not inexpensive either. I
wanted to tell Ali it was not the book, but I who was unworthy. I hopped back on
the bicycle. "Thank Hassan for me," I said.

I ended up tossing the book on the heap of gifts in the corner of my room.
But my eyes kept going back to it, so I buried it at the bottom. Before I went to
bed that night, I asked Baba if he'd seen my new watch anywhere.

THE NEXT MORNING, I waited in my room for Ali to clear the breakfast table in
the kitchen. Waited for him to do the dishes, wipe the counters. I looked out my
bedroom window and waited until Ali and Hassan went grocery shopping to the
bazaar, pushing the empty wheelbarrows in front of them.

Then I took a couple of the envelopes of cash from the pile of gifts and my
watch, and tiptoed out. I paused before Baba's study and listened in. He'd been in
there all morning, making phone calls. He was talking to someone now, about a
shipment of rugs due to arrive next week. I went downstairs, crossed the yard,
and entered Ali and Hassan's living quarters by the loquat tree. 1 lifted Hassan's
mattress and planted my new watch and a handful of Afghani bills under it.

I waited another thirty minutes. Then I knocked on Baba's door and told
what I hoped would be the last in a long line of shameful lies.

THROUGH MY BEDROOM WINDOW, I watched Ali and Hassan push the
wheelbarrows loaded with meat, _naan_, fruit, and vegetables up the driveway. I
saw Baba emerge from the house and walk up to Ali. Their mouths moved over
words I couldn't hear. Baba pointed to the house and Ali nodded. They separated.
Baba came back to the house; Ali followed Hassan to their hut.

A few moments later, Baba knocked on my door. "Come to my office," he

said.

"We're all going to sit down and settle this thing."

I went to Baba's study, sat in one of the leather sofas. It was thirty
minutes or more before Hassan and Ali joined us.

THEY'D BOTH BEEN CRYING; I could tell from their red, puffed up eyes. They
stood before Baba, hand in hand, and I wondered how and when I'd become
capable of causing this kind of pain.

Baba came right out and asked. "Did you steal that money? Did you steal
Amir's watch, Hassan?"

Hassan's reply was a single word, delivered in a thin, raspy voice: "Yes."

I flinched, like I'd been slapped. My heart sank and I almost blurted out
the truth. Then I understood: This was Hassan's final sacrifice for me. If he'd said
no, Baba would have believed him because we all knew Hassan never lied. And if

Baba believed him, then I'd be the accused; I would have to explain and I would
be revealed for what I really was. Baba would never, ever forgive me. And that
led to another understanding: Hassan knew He knew I'd seen everything in that
alley, that I'd stood there and done nothing. He knew I had betrayed him and yet
he was rescuing me once again, maybe for the last time. I loved him in that
moment, loved him more than I'd ever loved anyone, and I wanted to tell them
all that I was the snake in the grass, the monster in the lake. I wasn't worthy of
this sacrifice; I was a liar, a cheat, and a thief. And I would have told, except that a
part of me was glad. Glad that this would all be over with soon. Baba would
dismiss them, there would be some pain, but life would move on. 1 wanted that,
to move on, to forget, to start with a clean slate. I wanted to be able to breathe
again.

Except Baba stunned me by saying, "I forgive you."

Forgive? But theft was the one unforgivable sin, the common
denominator of all sins. When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's
right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal
someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.
There is no act more wretched than stealing. Hadn't Baba sat me on his lap and
said those words to me? Then how could he just forgive Hassan? And if Baba
could forgive that, then why couldn't he forgive me for not being the son he'd
always wanted? Why--"We are leaving, Agha sahib," Ali said.

"What?" Baba said, the color draining from his face.

"We can't live here anymore," Ali said.

"But I forgive him, Ali, didn't you hear?" said Baba.

"Life here is impossible for us now, Agha sahib. We're leaving." Ali drew
Hassan to him, curled his arm around his son's shoulder. It was a protective
gesture and I knew whom Ali was protecting him from. Ali glanced my way and
in his cold, unforgiving look, I saw that Hassan had told him. He had told him
everything, about what Assef and his friends had done to him, about the kite,
about me. Strangely, I was glad that someone knew me for who I really was; I
was tired of pretending.

"I don't care about the money or the watch," Baba said, his arms open,
palms up.

"I don't understand why you're doing this... what do you mean
'impossible'?"

"I'm sorry, Agha sahib, but our bags are already packed. We have made
our decision."

Baba stood up, a sheen of grief across his face. "Ali, haven't I provided
well for you? Haven't I been good to you and Hassan? You're the brother I never
had, Ali, you know that. Please don't do this."

"Don't make this even more difficult than it already is, Agha sahib," Ali
said. His mouth twitched and, for a moment, I thought I saw a grimace. That was
when I understood the depth of the pain I had caused, the blackness of the grief I
had brought onto everyone, that not even Ali's paralyzed face could mask his
sorrow. I forced myself to look at Hassan, but his head was downcast, his
shoulders slumped, his finger twirling a loose string on the hem of his shirt.

Baba was pleading now. "At least tell me why. I need to know!"

Ali didn't tell Baba, just as he didn't protest when Hassan confessed to the
stealing. I'll never really know why, but I could imagine the two of them in that
dim little hut, weeping, Hassan pleading him not to give me away. But I couldn't
imagine the restraint it must have taken Ali to keep that promise.

"Will you drive us to the bus station?"

"I forbid you to do this!" Baba bellowed. "Do you hear me? I forbid you!"

"Respectfully, you can't forbid me anything, Agha sahib," Ali said. "We
don't work for you anymore."

Where will you go?" Baba asked. His voice was breaking.

Hazarajat.

"To your cousin?"

"Yes. Will you take us to the bus station, Agha sahib?"

Then I saw Baba do something I had never seen him do before: He cried. It
scared me a little, seeing a grown man sob. Fathers weren't supposed to cry.
"Please," Baba was saying, but Ali had already turned to the door, Hassan trailing
him. I'll never forget the way Baba said that, the pain in his plea, the fear.

IN KABUL, it rarely rained in the summer. Blue skies stood tall and far, the sun
like a branding iron searing the back of your neck. Creeks where Hassan and I
skipped stones all spring turned dry, and rickshaws stirred dust when they
sputtered by. People went to mosques for their ten raka'ts of noontime prayer
and then retreated to whatever shade they could find to nap in, waiting for the
cool of early evening. Summer meant long school days sweating in tightly
packed, poorly ventilated classrooms learning to recite ayats from the Koran,
struggling with those tongue-twisting, exotic Arabic words. It meant catching
flies in your palm while the mullah droned on and a hot breeze brought with it
the smell of shit from the outhouse across the schoolyard, churning dust around
the lone rickety basketball hoop.

But it rained the afternoon Baba took Ali and Hassan to the bus station.
Thunderheads rolled in, painted the sky iron gray. Within minutes, sheets of rain
were sweeping in, the steady hiss of falling water swelling in my ears.

Baba had offered to drive them to Bamiyan himself, but Ali refused.
Through the blurry, rain-soaked window of my bedroom, I watched Ali haul the
lone suitcase carrying all of their belongings to Baba's car idling outside the
gates. Hassan lugged his mattress, rolled tightly and tied with a rope, on his back.
He'd left all of his toys behind in the empty shack-I discovered them the next
day, piled in a corner just like the birthday presents in my room.

Slithering beads of rain sluiced down my window. I saw Baba slam the
trunk shut. Already drenched, he walked to the driver's side. Leaned in and said
something to Ali in the backseat, perhaps one last-ditch effort to change his
mind. They talked that way awhile, Baba getting soaked, stooping, one arm on
the roof of the car. But when he straightened, I saw in his slumping shoulders
that the life I had known since I'd been born was over. Baba slid in. The
headlights came on and cut twin funnels of light in the rain. If this were one of
the Hindi movies Hassan and I used to watch, this was the part where I'd run
outside, my bare feet splashing rainwater. I'd chase the car, screaming for it to
stop. I'd pull Hassan out of the backseat and tell him I was sorry, so sorry, my
tears mixing with rainwater. We'd hug in the downpour. But this was no Hindi
movie. I was sorry, but I didn't cry and I didn't chase the car. I watched Baba's
car pull away from the curb, taking with it the person whose first spoken word
had been my name. I caught one final blurry glimpse of Hassan slumped in the
back seat before Baba turned left at the street corner where we'd played marbles
so many times.

I stepped back and all I saw was rain through windowpanes that looked
like melting silver.

TEN

March 1981

A young woman sat across from us. She was dressed in an olive green dress with
a black shawl wrapped tightly around her face against the night chill. She burst
into prayer every time the truck jerked or stumbled into a pothole, her
"Bismillah!" peaking with each of the truck's shudders and jolts. Her husband, a
burly man in baggy pants and sky blue turban, cradled an infant in one arm and
thumbed prayer beads with his free hand. His lips moved in silent prayer. There
were others, in all about a dozen, including Baba and me, sitting with our
suitcases between our legs, cramped with these strangers in the tarpaulin-
covered cab of an old Russian truck.

My innards had been roiling since we'd left Kabul just after two in the
morning. Baba never said so, but I knew he saw my car sickness as yet another of
my array of weakness--I saw it on his embarrassed face the couple of times my
stomach had clenched so badly I had moaned. When the burly guy with the
beads--the praying woman's husband--asked if I was going to get sick, I said I
might. Baba looked away. The man lifted his corner of the tarpaulin cover and
rapped on the driver's window, asked him to stop. But the driver, Karim, a
scrawny dark-skinned man with hawk-boned features and a pencil-thin
mustache, shook his head.

"We are too close to Kabul," he shot back. "Tell him to have a strong
stomach."

Baba grumbled something under his breath. I wanted to tell him I was
sorry, but suddenly I was salivating, the back of my throat tasting bile. I turned
around, lifted the tarpaulin, and threw up over the side of the moving truck.
Behind me, Baba was apologizing to the other passengers. As if car sickness was
a crime. As if you weren't supposed to get sick when you were eighteen. I threw
up two more times before Karim agreed to stop, mostly so I wouldn't stink up his
vehicle, the instrument of his livelihood. Karim was a people smuggler—it was a
pretty lucrative business then, driving people out of Shorawi-occupied Kabul to
the relative safety of Pakistan. He was taking us to Jalalabad, about 170
kilometers southeast of Kabul, where his brother, Toor, who had a bigger truck
with a second convoy of refugees, was waiting to drive us across the Khyber Pass
and into Peshawar.

We were a few kilometers west of Mahipar Falls when Karim pulled to the
side of the road. Mahipar-which means "Flying Fish"-was a high summit with a
precipitous drop overlooking the hydro plant the Germans had built for
Afghanistan back in 1967. Baba and I had driven over the summit countless
times on our way to Jalalabad, the city of cypress trees and sugarcane fields
where Afghans vacationed in the winter.

I hopped down the back of the truck and lurched to the dusty
embankment on the side of the road. My mouth filled with saliva, a sign of the
retching that was yet to come. I stumbled to the edge of the cliff overlooking the
deep valley that was shrouded in dark ness. I stooped, hands on my kneecaps,
and waited for the bile. Somewhere, a branch snapped, an owl hooted. The wind,
soft and cold, clicked through tree branches and stirred the bushes that
sprinkled the slope. And from below, the faint sound of water tumbling through
the valley.

Standing on the shoulder of the road, I thought of the way we'd left the
house where I'd lived my entire life, as if we were going out for a bite: dishes
smeared with kofta piled in the kitchen sink; laundry in the wicker basket in the
foyer; beds unmade; Baba's business suits hanging in the closet. Tapestries still
hung on the walls of the living room and my mother's books still crowded the
shelves in Baba's study. The signs of our elopement were subtle: My parents'
wedding picture was gone, as was the grainy photograph of my grandfather and
King Nader Shah standing over the dead deer. A few items of clothing were
missing from the closets. The leather-bound notebook Rahim Khan had given me
five years earlier was gone.

In the morning, Jalaluddin-our seventh servant in five years-would
probably think we'd gone out for a stroll or a drive. We hadn't told him. You
couldn't trust anyone in Kabul any more-for a fee or under threat, people told
on each other, neighbor on neighbor, child on parent, brother on brother, servant
on master, friend on friend. I thought of the singer Ahmad Zahir, who had played
the accordion at my thirteenth birthday. He had gone for a drive with some
friends, and someone had later found his body on the side of the road, a bullet in
the back of his head. The rafiqs, the comrades, were everywhere and they'd split
Kabul into two groups: those who eavesdropped and those who didn't. The
tricky part was that no one knew who belonged to which. A casual remark to the
tailor while getting fitted for a suit might land you in the dungeons of Poleh-
charkhi. Complain about the curfew to the butcher and next thing you knew, you
were behind bars staring at the muzzle end of a Kalashnikov. Even at the dinner
table, in the privacy of their home, people had to speak in a calculated manner-
the rafiqs were in the classrooms too; they'd taught children to spy on their
parents, what to listen for, whom to tell.

What was I doing on this road in the middle of the night? I should have
been in bed, under my blanket, a book with dog-eared pages at my side. This had
to be a dream. Had to be. Tomorrow morning, I'd wake up, peek out the window:
No grim-faced Russian soldiers patrolling the sidewalks, no tanks rolling up and
down the streets of my city, their turrets swiveling like accusing fingers, no
rubble, no curfews, no Russian Army Personnel Carriers weaving through the
bazaars. Then, behind me, I heard Baba and Karim discussing the arrangement in
Jalalabad over a smoke. Karim was reassuring Baba that his brother had a big
truck of "excellent and first-class quality," and that the trek to Peshawar would
be very routine. "He could take you there with his eyes closed," Karim said. I
overheard him telling Baba how he and his brother knew the Russian and Afghan
soldiers who worked the checkpoints, how they had set up a "mutually
profitable" arrangement. This was no dream. As if on cue, a MiG suddenly
screamed past overhead. Karim tossed his cigarette and produced a hand gun
from his waist. Pointing it to the sky and making shooting gestures, he spat and
cursed at the MiG.

I wondered where Hassan was. Then the inevitable. I vomited on a tangle
of weeds, my retching and groaning drowned in the deafening roar of the MiG.

WE PULLED UP to the checkpoint at Mahipar twenty minutes later. Our driver let
the truck idle and hopped down to greet the approaching voices. Feet crushed
gravel. Words were exchanged, brief and hushed. A flick of a lighter. "Spasseba."

Another flick of the lighter. Someone laughed, a shrill cackling sound that
made me jump. Baba's hand clamped down on my thigh. The laughing man broke
into song, a slurring, off-key rendition of an old Afghan wedding song, delivered
with a thick Russian accent: Ahesta boro, Mah-e-man, ahesta boro.

Go slowly, my lovely moon, go slowly.

Boot heels clicked on asphalt. Someone flung open the tarpaulin hanging
over the back of the truck, and three faces peered in. One was Karim, the other
two were soldiers, one Afghan, the other a grinning Russian, face like a bulldog's,
cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth. Behind them, a bone-colored moon
hung in the sky. Karim and the Afghan soldier had a brief exchange in Pashtu. I
caught a little of it-something about Toor and his bad luck. The Russian soldier
thrust his face into the rear of the truck. He was humming the wedding song and
drumming his finger on the edge of the tailgate. Even in the dim light of the
moon, I saw the glazed look in his eyes as they skipped from passenger to
passenger. Despite the cold, sweat streamed from his brow. His eyes settled on
the young woman wearing the black shawl. He spoke in Russian to Karim
without taking his eyes off her. Karim gave a curt reply in Russian, which the
soldier returned with an even curter retort. The Afghan soldier said something
too, in a low, reasoning voice. But the Russian soldier shouted something that
made the other two flinch. I could feel Baba tightening up next to me. Karim
cleared his throat, dropped his head. Said the soldier wanted a half hour with the
lady in the back of the truck.

The young woman pulled the shawl down over her face. Burst into tears.
The toddler sitting in her husband's lap started crying too. The husband's face
had become as pale as the moon hovering above. He told Karim to ask "Mister
Soldier Sahib" to show a little mercy, maybe he had a sister or a mother, maybe
he had a wife too. The Russian listened to Karim and barked a series of words.

"It's his price for letting us pass," Karim said. He couldn't bring himself to
look the husband in the eye.

"But we've paid a fair price already. He's getting paid good money," the
husband said.

Karim and the Russian soldier spoke. "He says... he says every price has a

tax."

That was when Baba stood up. It was my turn to clamp a hand on his
thigh, but Baba pried it loose, snatched his leg away. When he stood, he eclipsed
the moonlight. "I want you to ask this man something," Baba said. He said it to
Karim, but looked directly at the Russian officer. "Ask him where his shame is."

They spoke. "He says this is war. There is no shame in war."

"Tell him he's wrong. War doesn't negate decency. It demands it, even
more than in times of peace."

Do you have to always be the hero? I thought, my heart fluttering. Can't
you just let it go for once? But I knew he couldn't--it wasn't in his nature. The
problem was, his nature was going to get us all killed.

The Russian soldier said something to Karim, a smile creasing his lips.
"Agha sahib," Karim said, "these Roussi are not like us. They understand nothing
about respect, honor."

"What did he say?"

"He says he'll enjoy putting a bullet in you almost as much as..." Karim
trailed off, but nodded his head toward the young woman who had caught the
guard's eye. The soldier flicked his unfinished cigarette and unholstered his
handgun. So this is where Baba dies, I thought. This is how it's going to happen.
In my head, I said a prayer I had learned in school.

"Tell him I 'll take a thousand of his bullets before I let this indecency take
place," Baba said. My mind flashed to that winter day six years ago. Me, peering
around the corner in the alley. Kamal and Wali holding Hassan down. Assef's
buttock muscles clenching and unclenching, his hips thrusting back and forth.
Some hero I had been, fretting about the kite. Sometimes, I too wondered if I was
really Baba's son.

The bulldog-faced Russian raised his gun.

"Baba, sit down please," I said, tugging at his sleeve. "I think he really
means to shoot you."

Baba slapped my hand away. "Haven't I taught you anything?" he
snapped. He turned to the grinning soldier. "Tell him he'd better kill me good
with that first shot. Because if I don't go down, I'm tearing him to pieces,
goddamn his father!"

The Russian soldier's grin never faltered when he heard the translation.
He clicked the safety on the gun. Pointed the barrel to Baba's chest. Heart
pounding in my throat, I buried my face in my hands.

The gun roared.

It's done, then. I'm eighteen and alone. I have no one left in the world.
Baba's dead and now I have to bury him. Where do I bury him? Where do I go
after that? But the whirlwind of half thoughts spinning in my head came to a halt
when I cracked my eyelids, found Baba still standing. I saw a second Russian
officer with the others. It was from the muzzle of his upturned gun that smoke
swirled. The soldier who had meant to shoot Baba had already holstered his
weapon. He was shuffling his feet. I had never felt more like crying and laughing
at the same time.

The second Russian officer, gray-haired and heavyset, spoke to us in
broken Farsi. He apologized for his comrade's behavior. "Russia sends them here
to fight," he said. "But they are just boys, and when they come here, they find the
pleasure of drug." He gave the younger officer the rueful look of a father

exasperated with his misbehaving son. "This one is attached to drug now. I try to
stop him..." He waved us off.

Moments later, we were pulling away. I heard a laugh and then the first
soldier's voice, slurry and off-key, singing the old wedding song.

WE RODE IN SILENCE for about fifteen minutes before the young woman's
husband suddenly stood and did something I'd seen many others do before him:
He kissed Baba's hand.

TOOR'S BAD LUCK. Hadn't I overheard that in a snippet of conversation back at
Mahipar? We rolled into Jalalabad about an hour before sunrise. Karim ushered
us quickly from the truck into a one-story house at the intersection of two dirt
roads lined with flat one-story homes, acacia trees, and closed shops. I pulled the
collar of my coat against the chill as we hurried into the house, dragging our
belongings. For some reason, I remember smelling radishes.

Once he had us inside the dimly lit, bare living room, Karim locked the
front door, pulled the tattered sheets that passed for curtains. Then he took a
deep breath and gave us the bad news: His brother Toor couldn't take us to
Peshawar. It seemed his truck's engine had blown the week before and Toor was
still waiting for parts.

"Last week?" someone exclaimed. "If you knew this, why did you bring us

here?"

I caught a flurry of movement out of the corner of my eye. Then a blur of
something zipping across the room, and the next thing I saw was Karim slammed
against the wall, his sandaled feet dangling two feet above the floor. Wrapped
around his neck were Baba's hands.

"I'll tell you why," Baba snapped. "Because he got paid for his leg of the
trip. That's all he cared about." Karim was making guttural choking sounds.
Spittle dripped from the corner of his mouth.

"Put him down, Agha, you're killing him," one of the passengers said.

"It's what I intend to do," Baba said. What none of the others in the room
knew was that Baba wasn't joking. Karim was turning red and kicking his legs.
Baba kept choking him until the young mother, the one the Russian officer had
fancied, begged him to stop.

Karim collapsed on the floor and rolled around fighting for air when Baba
finally let go. The room fell silent. Less than two hours ago, Baba had volunteered
to take a bullet for the honor of a woman he didn't even know. Now he'd almost
choked a man to death, would have done it cheerfully if not for the pleas of that
same woman.

Something thumped next door. No, not next door, below.

"What's that?" someone asked.

"The others," Karim panted between labored breaths. "In the basement."

"How long have they been waiting?" Baba said, standing over Karim.

"Two weeks."

"I thought you said the truck broke down last week."

Karim rubbed his throat. "It might have been the week before," he
croaked.

How long?

What?

"How long for the parts?" Baba roared. Karim flinched but said nothing. I
was glad for the darkness. I didn't want to see the murderous look on Baba's
face.

THE STENCH OF SOMETHING DANK, like mildew, bludgeoned my nostrils the
moment Karim opened the door that led down the creaky steps to the basement.
We descended in single file. The steps groaned under Baba's weight. Standing in
the cold basement, I felt watched by eyes blinking in the dark. I saw shapes
huddled around the room, their silhouettes thrown on the walls by the dim light
of a pair of kerosene lamps. A low murmur buzzed through the basement,
beneath it the sound of water drops trickling somewhere, and, something else, a
scratching sound.

Baba sighed behind me and dropped the bags.

Karim told us it should be a matter of a couple of short days before the
truck was fixed. Then we'd be on our way to Peshawar. On to freedom. On to
safety.

The basement was our home for the next week and, by the third night, I
discovered the source of the scratching sounds. Rats.

ONCE MY EYES ADJUSTED to the dark, I counted about thirty refugees in that
basement. We sat shoulder to shoulder along the walls, ate crackers, bread with
dates, apples. That first night, all the men prayed together. One of the refugees
asked Baba why he wasn't joining them. "God is going to save us all. Why don't
you pray to him?"

Baba snorted a pinch of his snuff. Stretched his legs. "What'll save us is
eight cylinders and a good carburetor." That silenced the rest of them for good
about the matter of God.

It was later that first night when I discovered that two of the people
hiding with us were Kamal and his father. That was shocking enough, seeing
Kamal sitting in the basement just a few feet away from me. But when he and his
father came over to our side of the room and I saw Kamal's face, really saw it...

He had withered-there was simply no other word for it. His eyes gave me
a hollow look and no recognition at all registered in them. His shoulders hunched
and his cheeks sagged like they were too tired to cling to the bone beneath. His
father, who'd owned a movie theater in Kabul, was telling Baba how, three
months before, a stray bullet had struck his wife in the temple and killed her.
Then he told Baba about Kamal. I caught only snippets of it: Should have never
let him go alone... always so handsome, you know... four of them... tried to fight...
God... took him... bleeding down there... his pants... doesn't talk any more... just
stares...

THERE WOULD BE NO TRUCK, Karim told us after we'd spent a week in the rat-
infested basement. The truck was beyond repair.

"There is another option," Karim said, his voice rising amid the groans.
His cousin owned a fuel truck and had smuggled people with it a couple of times.
He was here in Jalalabad and could probably fit us all.

Everyone except an elderly couple decided to go.

We left that night, Baba and I, Kamal and his father, the others. Karim and
his cousin, a square-faced balding man named Aziz, helped us get into the fuel
tank.

One by one, we mounted the idling truck's rear deck, climbed the rear
access ladder, and slid down into the tank. I remember Baba climbed halfway up
the ladder, hopped back down and fished the snuffbox from his pocket. He
emptied the box and picked up a handful of dirt from the middle of the unpaved

road. He kissed the dirt. Poured it into the box. Stowed the box in his breast
pocket, next to his heart.

PANIC.

You open your mouth. Open it so wide your jaws creak. You order your
lungs to draw air, NOW, you need air, need it NOW But your airways ignore you.
They collapse, tighten, squeeze, and suddenly you're breathing through a
drinking straw. Your mouth closes and your lips purse and all you can manage is
a strangled croak. Your hands wriggle and shake. Somewhere a dam has cracked
open and a flood of cold sweat spills, drenches your body. You want to scream.
You would if you could. But you have to breathe to scream.

Panic.

The basement had been dark. The fuel tank was pitch-black. I looked
right, left, up, down, waved my hands before my eyes, didn't see so much as a
hint of movement. I blinked, blinked again. Nothing at all. The air wasn't right, it
was too thick, almost solid. Air wasn't supposed to be solid. I wanted to reach out
with my hands, crush the air into little pieces, stuff them down my windpipe. And
the stench of gasoline. My eyes stung from the fumes, like someone had peeled
my lids back and rubbed a lemon on them. My nose caught fire with each breath.
You could die in a place like this, I thought. A scream was coming. Coming,
coming...

And then a small miracle. Baba tugged at my sleeve and something
glowed green in the dark. Light! Baba's wristwatch. I kept my eyes glued to those
fluorescent green hands. I was so afraid I'd lose them, I didn't dare blink.

Slowly I became aware of my surroundings. I heard groans and muttered
prayers. I heard a baby cry, its mother's muted soothing. Someone retched.
Someone else cursed the Shorawi. The truck bounced side to side, up and down.
Heads banged against metal.

Think of something good," Baba said in my ear. "Something happy.

Something good. Something happy. I let my mind wander. I let it come:
Friday afternoon in Paghman. An open field of grass speckled with mulberry
trees in blossom. Hassan and I stand ankle-deep in untamed grass, I am tugging
on the line, the spool spinning in Hassan's calloused hands, our eyes turned up to
the kite in the sky. Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing
to say, but because we don't have to say anything-that's how it is between
people who are each other's first memories, people who have fed from the same
breast. A breeze stirs the grass and Hassan lets the spool roll. The kite spins, dips,
steadies. Our twin shadows dance on the rippling grass. From somewhere over
the low brick wall at the other end of the field, we hear chatter and laughter and
the chirping of a water fountain. And music, some thing old and familiar, I think
it's Ya Mowlah on rubab strings. Someone calls our names over the wall, says it's
time for tea and cake.

I didn't remember what month that was, or what year even. I only knew
the memory lived in me, a perfectly encapsulated morsel of a good past, a
brushstroke of color on the gray, barren canvas that our lives had become.

THE REST OF THAT RIDE is scattered bits and pieces of memory that come and
go, most of it sounds and smells: MiGs roaring past overhead; staccatos of
gunfire; a donkey braying nearby; the jingling of bells and mewling of sheep;
gravel crushed under the truck's tires; a baby wailing in the dark; the stench of
gasoline, vomit, and shit.

What I remember next is the blinding light of early morning as I climbed
out of the fuel tank. I remember turning my face up to the sky, squinting,
breathing like the world was running out of air.

I lay on the side of the dirt road next to a rocky trench, looked up to the
gray morning sky, thankful for air, thankful for light, thankful to be alive.

"We're in Pakistan, Amir," Baba said. He was standing over me. "Karim
says he will call for a bus to take us to Peshawar."

I rolled onto my chest, still lying on the cool dirt, and saw our suitcases on
either side of Baba's feet. Through the upside down V between his legs, I saw the
truck idling on the side of the road, the other refugees climbing down the rear
ladder. Beyond that, the dirt road unrolled through fields that were like leaden
sheets under the gray sky and disappeared behind a line of bowl-shaped hills.
Along the way, it passed a small village strung out atop a sun baked slope.

My eyes returned to our suitcases. They made me sad for Baba. After
everything he'd built, planned, fought for, fretted over, dreamed of, this was the
summation of his life: one disappointing son and two suitcases.

Someone was screaming. No, not screaming. Wailing. I saw the passengers
huddled in a circle, heard their urgent voices. Someone said the word "fumes."
Someone else said it too. The wail turned into a throat-ripping screech.

Baba and I hurried to the pack of onlookers and pushed our way through
them. Kamal's father was sitting cross-legged in the center of the circle, rocking
back and forth, kissing his son's ashen face.

"He won't breathe! My boy won't breathe!" he was crying. Kamal's lifeless
body lay on his father's lap. His right hand, uncurled and limp, bounced to the
rhythm of his father's sobs. "My boy! He won't breathe! Allah, help him breathe!"

Baba knelt beside him and curled an arm around his shoulder. But
Kamal's father shoved him away and lunged for Karim who was standing nearby
with his cousin. What happened next was too fast and too short to be called a
scuffle. Karim uttered a surprised cry and backpedaled. I saw an arm swing, a leg
kick. A moment later, Kamal's father was standing with Karim's gun in his hand.

"Don't shoot me!" Karim cried.

But before any of us could say or do a thing, Kamal's father shoved the
barrel in his own mouth. I'll never forget the echo of that blast. Or the flash of
light and the spray of red.

I doubled over again and dry-heaved on the side of the road.

ELEVEN

Fremont, California. 1980s Baba loved the idea of America.

It was living in America that gave him an ulcer.

I remember the two of us walking through Lake Elizabeth Park in
Fremont, a few streets down from our apartment, and watching boys at batting
practice, little girls giggling on the swings in the playground. Baba would
enlighten me with his politics during those walks with long-winded
dissertations. "There are only three real men in this world, Amir," he'd say. He'd
count them off on his fingers: America the brash savior, Britain, and Israel. "The
rest of them-" he used to wave his hand and make a phht sound "-they're like
gossiping old women."

The bit about Israel used to draw the ire of Afghans in Fremont who
accused him of being pro-Jewish and, de facto, anti Islam. Baba would meet them
for tea and rowt cake at the park, drive them crazy with his politics. "What they
don't understand," he'd tell me later, "is that religion has nothing to do with it."
In Baba's view, Israel was an island of "real men" in a sea of Arabs too busy
getting fat off their oil to care for their own. "Israel does this, Israel does that,"
Baba would say in a mock-Arabic accent. "Then do something about it! Take
action. You're Arabs, help the Palestinians, then!"

He loathed Jimmy Carter, whom he called a "big-toothed cretin." In 1980,
when we were still in Kabul, the U.S. announced it would be boycotting the
Olympic Games in Moscow. "Wah wah!" Baba exclaimed with disgust. "Brezhnev
is massacring Afghans and all that peanut eater can say is I won't come swim in
your pool." Baba believed Carter had unwittingly done more for communism
than Leonid Brezhnev. "He's not fit to run this country. It's like putting a boy who
can't ride a bike behind the wheel of a brand new Cadillac." What America and
the world needed was a hard man. A man to be reckoned with, someone who

took action instead of wringing his hands. That someone came in the form of
Ronald Reagan. And when Reagan went on TV and called the Shorawi "the Evil
Empire/' Baba went out and bought a picture of the grinning president giving a
thumbs up. He framed the picture and hung it in our hallway, nailing it right next
to the old black-and-white of himself in his thin necktie shaking hands with King
Zahir Shah. Most of our neighbors in Fremont were bus drivers, policemen, gas
station attendants, and unwed mothers collecting welfare, exactly the sort of
blue-collar people who would soon suffocate under the pillow Reaganomics
pressed to their faces. Baba was the lone Republican in our building.

But the Bay Area's smog stung his eyes, the traffic noise gave him
headaches, and the pollen made him cough. The fruit was never sweet enough,
the water never clean enough, and where were all the trees and open fields? For
two years, I tried to get Baba to enroll in ESL classes to improve his broken
English. But he scoffed at the idea. "Maybe I'll spell 'cat' and the teacher will give
me a glittery little star so I can run home and show it off to you," he'd grumble.

One Sunday in the spring of 1983,1 walked into a small bookstore that
sold used paperbacks, next to the Indian movie theater just west of where
Amtrak crossed Fremont Boulevard. I told Baba I'd be out in five minutes and he
shrugged. He had been working at a gas station in Fremont and had the day off. I
watched him jaywalk across Fremont Boulevard and enter Fast & Easy, a little
grocery store run by an elderly Vietnamese couple, Mr. and Mrs. Nguyen. They
were gray-haired, friendly people; she had Parkinson's, he'd had his hip replaced.
"He's like Six Million Dollar Man now," she always said to me, laughing
toothlessly. "Remember Six Million Dollar Man, Amir?" Then Mr. Nguyen would
scowl like Lee Majors, pretend he was running in slow motion.

I was flipping through a worn copy of a Mike Hammer mystery when I
heard screaming and glass breaking. I dropped the book and hurried across the
street. I found the Nguyens behind the counter, all the way against the wall, faces
ashen, Mr. Nguyen's arms wrapped around his wife. On the floor: oranges, an
overturned magazine rack, a broken jar of beef jerky, and shards of glass at
Baba's feet.

It turned out that Baba had had no cash on him for the oranges. He'd
written Mr. Nguyen a check and Mr. Nguyen had asked for an ID. "He wants to
see my license," Baba bellowed in Farsi. "Almost two years we've bought his
damn fruits and put money in his pocket and the son of a dog wants to see my
license!"

"Baba, it's not personal," I said, smiling at the Nguyens. "They're supposed
to ask for an ID."

"I don't want you here," Mr. Nguyen said, stepping in front of his wife. He
was pointing at Baba with his cane. He turned to me.

"You're nice young man but your father, he's crazy. Not welcome
anymore."

"Does he think I'm a thief?" Baba said, his voice rising. People had
gathered outside. They were staring. "What kind of a country is this? No one
trusts anybody!"

"I call police," Mrs. Nguyen said, poking out her face. "You get out or I call

police."

"Please, Mrs. Nguyen, don't call the police. I'll take him home. Just don't
call the police, okay? Please?"

"Yes, you take him home. Good idea," Mr. Nguyen said. His eyes, behind
his wire-rimmed bifocals, never left Baba. I led Baba through the doors. He
kicked a magazine on his way out. After I'd made him promise he wouldn't go
back in, I returned to the store and apologized to the Nguyens. Told them my
father was going through a difficult time. I gave Mrs. Nguyen our telephone
number and address, and told her to get an estimate for the damages. "Please call
me as soon as you know. I'll pay for everything, Mrs. Nguyen. I'm so sorry." Mrs.
Nguyen took the sheet of paper from me and nodded. I saw her hands were
shaking more than usual, and that made me angry at Baba, his causing an old
woman to shake like that.

"My father is still adjusting to life in America," I said, by way of
explanation.

I wanted to tell them that, in Kabul, we snapped a tree branch and used it
as a credit card. Hassan and I would take the wooden stick to the bread maker.
He'd carve notches on our stick with his knife, one notch for each loaf of_naan_
he'd pull for us from the tandoor's roaring flames. At the end of the month, my

father paid him for the number of notches on the stick. That was it. No questions.
No ID.

But I didn't tell them. I thanked Mr. Nguyen for not calling the cops. Took
Baba home. He sulked and smoked on the balcony while I made rice with chicken
neck stew. A year and a half since we'd stepped off the Boeing from Peshawar,
and Baba was still adjusting.

We ate in silence that night. After two bites, Baba pushed away his plate.

I glanced at him across the table, his nails chipped and black with engine
oil, his knuckles scraped, the smells of the gas station--dust, sweat, and gasoline-
on his clothes. Baba was like the widower who remarries but can't let go of his
dead wife. He missed the sugarcane fields of Jalalabad and the gardens of
Paghman. He missed people milling in and out of his house, missed walking
down the bustling aisles of Shor Bazaar and greeting people who knew him and
his father, knew his grandfather, people who shared ancestors with him, whose
pasts intertwined with his.

For me, America was a place to bury my memories.

For Baba, a place to mourn his.

"Maybe we should go back to Peshawar," I said, watching the ice float in
my glass of water. We'd spent six months in Peshawar waiting for the INS to
issue our visas. Our grimy one-bedroom apartment smelled like dirty socks and
cat droppings, but we were surrounded by people we knew-at least people Baba
knew. He'd invite the entire corridor of neighbors for dinner, most of them
Afghans waiting for visas. Inevitably, someone would bring a set of tabla and
someone else a harmonium. Tea would brew, and who ever had a passing singing
voice would sing until the sun rose, the mosquitoes stopped buzzing, and
clapping hands grew sore.

"You were happier there, Baba. It was more like home," I said.

Peshawar was good for me. Not good for you.

'You work so hard here.

"It's not so bad now," he said, meaning since he had become the day
manager at the gas station. But I'd seen the way he winced and rubbed his wrists
on damp days. The way sweat erupted on his forehead as he reached for his
bottle of antacids after meals. "Besides, I didn't bring us here for me, did I?"

I reached across the table and put my hand on his. My student hand, clean
and soft, on his laborer's hand, grubby and calloused. I thought of all the trucks,
train sets, and bikes he'd bought me in Kabul. Now America. One last gift for
Amir.

Just one month after we arrived in the U.S., Baba found a job off
Washington Boulevard as an assistant at a gas station owned by an Afghan
acquaintance--he'd started looking for work the same week we arrived. Six days
a week, Baba pulled twelve-hour shifts pumping gas, running the register,
changing oil, and washing windshields. I'd bring him lunch sometimes and find
him looking for a pack of cigarettes on the shelves, a customer waiting on the
other side of the oil-stained counter, Baba's face drawn and pale under the bright
fluorescent lights. The electronic bell over the door would ding-dong when I
walked in, and Baba would look over his shoulder, wave, and smile, his eyes
watering from fatigue.

The same day he was hired, Baba and I went to our eligibility officer in
San Jose, Mrs. Dobbins. She was an overweight black woman with twinkling eyes
and a dimpled smile. She'd told me once that she sang in church, and I believed
her-she had a voice that made me think of warm milk and honey. Baba dropped
the stack of food stamps on her desk. "Thank you but I don't want," Baba said. "I
work always. In Afghanistan I work, in America I work. Thank you very much,
Mrs. Dobbins, but I don't like it free money."

Mrs. Dobbins blinked. Picked up the food stamps, looked from me to Baba
like we were pulling a prank, or "slipping her a trick" as Hassan used to say.
"Fifteen years I been doin' this job and nobody's ever done this," she said. And
that was how Baba ended those humiliating food stamp moments at the cash
register and alleviated one of his greatest fears: that an Afghan would see him
buying food with charity money. Baba walked out of the welfare office like a man
cured of a tumor.

THAT SUMMER OF 1983,1 graduated from high school at the age of twenty, by
far the oldest senior tossing his mortarboard on the football field that day. I
remember losing Baba in the swarm of families, flashing cameras, and blue
gowns. I found him near the twenty-yard line, hands shoved in his pockets,
camera dangling on his chest. He disappeared and reappeared behind the people
moving between us: squealing blue-clad girls hugging, crying, boys high-fiving
their fathers, each other. Baba's beard was graying, his hair thinning at the
temples, and hadn't he been taller in Kabul? He was wearing his brown suit-his
only suit, the same one he wore to Afghan weddings and funerals-and the red tie
I had bought for his fiftieth birthday that year. Then he saw me and waved.
Smiled. He motioned for me to wear my mortarboard, and took a picture of me
with the school's clock tower in the background. I smiled for him-in a way, this
was his day more than mine. He walked to me, curled his arm around my neck,
and gave my brow a single kiss. "I am Moftakhir, Amir," he said. Proud. His eyes
gleamed when he said that and I liked being on the receiving end of that look.

He took me to an Afghan kabob house in Hayward that night and ordered
far too much food. He told the owner that his son was going to college in the fall. I
had debated him briefly about that just before graduation, and told him I wanted
to get a job. Help out, save some money, maybe go to college the following year.
But he had shot me one of his smoldering Baba looks, and the words had
vaporized on my tongue.

After dinner, Baba took me to a bar across the street from the restaurant.
The place was dim, and the acrid smell of beer I'd always disliked permeated the
walls. Men in baseball caps and tank tops played pool, clouds of cigarette smoke
hovering over the green tables, swirling in the fluorescent light. We drew looks,
Baba in his brown suit and me in pleated slacks and sports jacket. We took a seat
at the bar, next to an old man, his leathery face sickly in the blue glow of the
Michelob sign overhead. Baba lit a cigarette and ordered us beers. "Tonight I am
too much happy," he announced to no one and everyone. "Tonight I drinking
with my son. And one, please, for my friend," he said, patting the old man on the
back. The old fellow tipped his hat and smiled. He had no upper teeth.

Baba finished his beer in three gulps and ordered another. He had three
before I forced myself to drink a quarter of mine. By then he had bought the old
man a scotch and treated a foursome of pool players to a pitcher of Budweiser.
Men shook his hand and clapped him on the back. They drank to him. Someone
lit his cigarette. Baba loosened his tie and gave the old man a handful of quarters.
He pointed to the jukebox. "Tell him to play his favorite songs," he said to me.

The old man nodded and gave Baba a salute. Soon, country music was blaring,
and, just like that, Baba had started a party.

At one point, Baba stood, raised his beer, spilling it on the sawdust floor,
and yelled, "Fuck the Russia!" The bar's laughter, then its full-throated echo
followed. Baba bought another round of pitchers for everyone.

When we left, everyone was sad to see him go. Kabul, Peshawar, Hayward.
Same old Baba, I thought, smiling.

I drove us home in Baba's old, ochre yellow Buick Century. Baba dozed off
on the way, snoring like a jackhammer. I smelled tobacco on him and alcohol,
sweet and pungent. But he sat up when I stopped the car and said in a hoarse
voice, "Keep driving to the end of the block."

"Why, Baba?"

"Just go." He had me park at the south end of the street. He reached in his
coat pocket and handed me a set of keys. "There," he said, pointing to the car in
front of us. It was an old model Ford, long and wide, a dark color I couldn't
discern in the moon light. "It needs painting, and I'll have one of the guys at the
station put in new shocks, but it runs."

I took the keys, stunned. I looked from him to the car.

"You'll need it to go to college," he said.

I took his hand in mine. Squeezed it. My eyes were tearing over and I was
glad for the shadows that hid our faces. "Thank you, Baba."

We got out and sat inside the Ford. It was a Grand Torino. Navy blue, Baba
said. I drove it around the block, testing the brakes, the radio, the turn signals. I
parked it in the lot of our apartment building and shut off the engine. "Tashakor,
Baba jan," I said. I wanted to say more, tell him how touched I was by his act of
kindness, how much I appreciated all that he had done for me, all that he was still
doing. But I knew I'd embarrass him. "Tashakor," I repeated instead.

He smiled and leaned back against the headrest, his forehead almost
touching the ceiling. We didn't say anything. Just sat in the dark, listened to the
tink-tink of the engine cooling, the wail of a siren in the distance. Then Baba
rolled his head toward me. "I wish Hassan had been with us today," he said.

A pair of steel hands closed around my windpipe at the sound of Hassan's
name. I rolled down the window. Waited for the steel hands to loosen their grip.

I WOULD ENROLL in junior college classes in the fall, I told Baba the day after
graduation. He was drinking cold black tea and chewing cardamom seeds, his
personal trusted antidote for hang over headaches.

"I think I'll major in English," I said. I winced inside, waiting for his reply.

"English?"

"Creative writing."

He considered this. Sipped his tea. "Stories, you mean. You'll make up
stories."

I looked down at my feet.

"They pay for that, making up stories?"

"If you're good," I said. "And if you get discovered."

"How likely is that, getting discovered?"

It happens," I said.

He nodded. "And what will you do while you wait to get good and get
discovered? How will you earn money? If you marry, how will you support your
khanum?"

I couldn't lift my eyes to meet his. "I'll... find a job."

"Oh," he said. "Wah wah! So, if I understand, you'll study several years to
earn a degree, then you'll get a chatti job like mine, one you could just as easily
land today, on the small chance that your degree might someday help you get-
discovered." He took a deep breath and sipped his tea. Grunted something about
medical school, law school, and "real work."

My cheeks burned and guilt coursed through me, the guilt of indulging
myself at the expense of his ulcer, his black fingernails and aching wrists. But I
would stand my ground, I decided. I didn't want to sacrifice for Baba anymore.
The last time I had done that, I had damned myself.

Baba sighed and, this time, tossed a whole handful of cardamom seeds in
his mouth.

SOMETIMES, I GOT BEHIND the wheel of my Ford, rolled down the windows, and
drove for hours, from the East Bay to the South Bay, up the Peninsula and back. I
drove through the grids of cottonwood-lined streets in our Fremont
neighborhood, where people who'd never shaken hands with kings lived in
shabby, flat one-story houses with barred windows, where old cars like mine
dripped oil on blacktop driveways. Pencil gray chain-link fences closed off the
backyards in our neighborhood. Toys, bald tires, and beer bottles with peeling
labels littered unkempt front lawns. I drove past tree-shaded parks that smelled
like bark, past strip malls big enough to hold five simultaneous Buzkashi
tournaments. I drove the Torino up the hills of Los Altos, idling past estates with
picture windows and silver lions guarding the wrought-iron gates, homes with
cherub fountains lining the manicured walkways and no Ford Torinos in the
drive ways. Homes that made Baba's house in Wazir Akbar Khan look like a
servant's hut.

I'd get up early some Saturday mornings and drive south on Highway 17,
push the Ford up the winding road through the mountains to Santa Cruz. I would
park by the old lighthouse and wait for sunrise, sit in my car and watch the fog
rolling in from the sea. In Afghanistan, I had only seen the ocean at the cinema.
Sitting in the dark next to Hassan, I had always wondered if it was true what I'd
read, that sea air smelled like salt. I used to tell Hassan that someday we'd walk
on a strip of seaweed-strewn beach, sink our feet in the sand, and watch the
water recede from our toes. The first time I saw the Pacific, I almost cried. It was
as vast and blue as the oceans on the movie screens of my childhood.

Sometimes in the early evening, I parked the car and walked up a freeway
overpass. My face pressed against the fence, I'd try to count the blinking red
taillights inching along, stretching as far as my eyes could see. BMWs. Saabs.
Porsches. Cars I'd never seen in Kabul, where most people drove Russian Volgas,
old Opels, or Iranian Paikans.

Almost two years had passed since we had arrived in the U.S., and I was
still marveling at the size of this country, its vastness. Beyond every freeway lay
another freeway, beyond every city another city hills beyond mountains and
mountains beyond hills, and, beyond those, more cities and more people.

Long before the Roussi army marched into Afghanistan, long before
villages were burned and schools destroyed, long before mines were planted like
seeds of death and children buried in rock-piled graves, Kabul had become a city
of ghosts for me. A city of harelipped ghosts.

America was different. America was a river, roaring along, unmindful of
the past. I could wade into this river, let my sins drown to the bottom, let the
waters carry me someplace far. Someplace with no ghosts, no memories, and no
sins.

If for nothing else, for that, I embraced America.

THE FOLLOWING SUMMER, the summer of 1984-the summer I turned twenty-
one-Baba sold his Buick and bought a dilapidated 71 Volkswagen bus for $550
from an old Afghan acquaintance who'd been a high-school science teacher in
Kabul. The neighbors' heads turned the afternoon the bus sputtered up the street

and farted its way across our lot. Baba killed the engine and let the bus roll
silently into our designated spot. We sank in our seats, laughed until tears rolled
down our cheeks, and, more important, until we were sure the neighbors weren't
watching anymore. The bus was a sad carcass of rusted metal, shattered
windows replaced with black garbage bags, balding tires, and upholstery
shredded down to the springs. But the old teacher had reassured Baba that the
engine and transmission were sound and, on that account, the man hadn't lied.

On Saturdays, Baba woke me up at dawn. As he dressed, I scanned the
classifieds in the local papers and circled the garage sale ads. We mapped our
route--Fremont, Union City, Newark, and Hayward first, then San Jose, Milpitas,
Sunnyvale, and Campbell if time permitted. Baba drove the bus, sipping hot tea
from the thermos, and I navigated. We stopped at garage sales and bought
knickknacks that people no longer wanted. We haggled over old sewing
machines, one-eyed Barbie dolls, wooden tennis rackets, guitars with missing
strings, and old Electrolux vacuum cleaners. By mid-afternoon, we'd filled the
back of the VW bus with used goods. Then early Sunday mornings, we drove to
the San Jose flea market off Berryessa, rented a spot, and sold the junk for a small
profit: a Chicago record that we'd bought for a quarter the day before might go
for $1, or $4 for a set of five; a ramshackle Singer sewing machine purchased for
$10 might, after some bargaining, bring in $25.

By that summer, Afghan families were working an entire section of the
San Jose flea market. Afghan music played in the aisles of the Used Goods section.
There was an unspoken code of behavior among Afghans at the flea market: You
greeted the guy across the aisle, you invited him for a bite of potato bolani or a
little qabuli, and you chatted. You offered tassali, condolences, for the death of a
parent, congratulated the birth of children, and shook your head mournfully
when the conversation turned to Afghanistan and the Roussis-which it
inevitably did. But you avoided the topic of Saturday. Because it might turn out
that the fellow across the isle was the guy you'd nearly blindsided at the freeway
exit yesterday in order to beat him to a promising garage sale.

The only thing that flowed more than tea in those aisles was Afghan
gossip. The flea market was where you sipped green tea with almond kolchas,
and learned whose daughter had broken off an engagement and run off with her
American boyfriend, who used to be Parchami-a communist-in Kabul, and who
had bought a house with under-the-table money while still on welfare. Tea,
Politics, and Scandal, the ingredients of an Afghan Sunday at the flea market.

I ran the stand sometimes as Baba sauntered down the aisle, hands
respectfully pressed to his chest, greeting people he knew from Kabul:
mechanics and tailors selling hand-me-down wool coats and scraped bicycle

helmets, alongside former ambassadors, out-of-work surgeons, and university
professors.

One early Sunday morning in July 1984, while Baba set up, I bought two
cups of coffee from the concession stand and returned to find Baba talking to an
older, distinguished-looking man. I put the cups on the rear bumper of the bus,
next to the REAGAN/BUSH FOR '84 sticker.

"Amir," Baba said, motioning me over, "this is General Sahib, Mr. Iqbal

Taheri.

He was a decorated general in Kabul. He worked for the Ministry of
Defense."

Taheri. Why did the name sound familiar? The general laughed like a man
used to attending formal parties where he'd laughed on cue at the minor jokes of
important people. He had wispy silver-gray hair combed back from his smooth,
tanned forehead, and tufts of white in his bushy eye brows. He smelled like
cologne and wore an iron-gray three-piece suit, shiny from too many pressings;
the gold chain of a pocket watch dangled from his vest.

"Such a lofty introduction," he said, his voice deep and cultured. "_Salaam,
bachem_." Hello, my child.

"_Salaam, _General Sahib," I said, shaking his hand. His thin hands belied a
firm grip, as if steel hid beneath the moisturized skin.

"Amir is going to be a great writer," Baba said. I did a double take at this.
"He has finished his first year of college and earned A's in all of his courses."

"Junior college," I corrected him.

"_Mashallah_," General Taheri said. "Will you be writing about our
country, history perhaps? Economics?"

"I write fiction," I said, thinking of the dozen or so short stories I had
written in the leather-bound notebook Rahim Khan had given me, wondering
why I was suddenly embarrassed by them in this man's presence.

"Ah, a storyteller," the general said. "Well, people need stories to divert
them at difficult times like this." He put his hand on Baba's shoulder and turned
to me. "Speaking of stories, your father and I hunted pheasant together one
summer day in Jalalabad," he said. "It was a marvelous time. If I recall correctly,
your father's eye proved as keen in the hunt as it had in business."

Baba kicked a wooden tennis racket on our tarpaulin spread with the toe
of his boot. "Some business."

General Taheri managed a simultaneously sad and polite smile, heaved a
sigh, and gently patted Baba's shoulder. "Zendagi migzara," he said. Life goes on.
He turned his eyes to me. "We Afghans are prone to a considerable degree of
exaggeration, bachem, and I have heard many men foolishly labeled great. But
your father has the distinction of belonging to the minority who truly deserves
the label." This little speech sounded to me the way his suit looked: often used
and unnaturally shiny.

"You're flattering me," Baba said.

"I am not," the general said, tilting his head sideways and pressing his
hand to his chest to convey humility. "Boys and girls must know the legacy of
their fathers." He turned to me. "Do you appreciate your father, bachem? Do you
really appreciate him?"

"Balay, General Sahib, I do," I said, wishing he'd not call me "my child."

"Then congratulations, you are already halfway to being a man," he said
with no trace of humor, no irony, the compliment of the casually arrogant.

"Padar jan, you forgot your tea." A young woman's voice. She was
standing behind us, a slim-hipped beauty with velvety coal black hair, an open
thermos and Styrofoam cup in her hand. I blinked, my heart quickening. She had
thick black eyebrows that touched in the middle like the arched wings of a flying
bird, and the gracefully hooked nose of a princess from old Persia-maybe that of

Tahmineh, Rostam's wife and Sohrab's mother from the _Shahnamah_. Her eyes,
walnut brown and shaded by fanned lashes, met mine. Held for a moment. Flew
away.

"You are so kind, my dear," General Taheri said. He took the cup from her.
Before she turned to go, I saw she had a brown, sickle-shaped birthmark on the
smooth skin just above her left jawline. She walked to a dull gray van two aisles
away and put the thermos inside. Her hair spilled to one side when she kneeled
amid boxes of old records and paperbacks.

"My daughter, Soraya jan," General Taheri said. He took a deep breath like
a man eager to change the subject and checked his gold pocket watch. "Well, time
to go and set up." He and Baba kissed on the cheek and he shook my hand with
both of his. "Best of luck with the writing," he said, looking me in the eye. His pale
blue eyes revealed nothing of the thoughts behind them.

For the rest of that day, I fought the urge to look toward the gray van.

IT CAME TO ME on our way home. Taheri, I knew I'd heard that name before.

"Wasn't there some story floating around about Taheri's daughter?" I said
to Baba, trying to sound casual.

"You know me," Baba said, inching the bus along the queue exiting the flea
market. "Talk turns to gossip and I walk away."

"But there was, wasn't there?" 1 said.

"Why do you ask?" He was looking at me coyly.

I shrugged and fought back a smile. "Just curious, Baba.

"Really? Is that all?" he said, his eyes playful, lingering on mine. "Has she
made an impression on you?"

I rolled my eyes. "Please, Baba."

He smiled, and swung the bus out of the flea market. We headed for
Highway 680. We drove in silence for a while. "All I've heard is that there was a
man once and things... didn't go well." He said this gravely, like he'd disclosed to
me that she had breast cancer.

"I hear she is a decent girl, hardworking and kind. But no khastegars, no
suitors, have knocked on the general's door since." Baba sighed. "It may be
unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change
the course of a whole lifetime, Amir," he said.

LYING AWAKE IN BED that night, I thought of Soraya Taheri's sickle-shaped
birthmark, her gently hooked nose, and the way her luminous eyes had fleetingly
held mine. My heart stuttered at the thought of her. Soraya Taheri. My Swap
Meet Princess.

TWELVE

In Afghanistan, _yelda_ is the first night of the month of _Jadi_, the first night of
winter, and the longest night of the year. As was the tradition, Hassan and I used
to stay up late, our feet tucked under the kursi, while Ali tossed apple skin into
the stove and told us ancient tales of sultans and thieves to pass that longest of
nights. It was from Ali that I learned the lore of _yelda_, that bedeviled moths

flung themselves at candle flames, and wolves climbed mountains looking for the
sun. Ali swore that if you ate water melon the night of _yelda_, you wouldn't get
thirsty the coming summer.

When I was older, I read in my poetry books that _yelda_ was the starless
night tormented lovers kept vigil, enduring the endless dark, waiting for the sun
to rise and bring with it their loved one. After I met Soraya Taheri, every night of
the week became a _yelda_ for me. And when Sunday mornings came, I rose from
bed, Soraya Taheri's brown-eyed face already in my head. In Baba's bus, I
counted the miles until I'd see her sitting barefoot, arranging cardboard boxes of
yellowed encyclopedias, her heels white against the asphalt, silver bracelets
jingling around her slender wrists. I'd think of the shadow her hair cast on the
ground when it slid off her back and hung down like a velvet curtain. Soraya.
Swap Meet Princess. The morning sun to my yelda.

I invented excuses to stroll down the aisle-which Baba acknowledged
with a playful smirk-and pass the Taheris' stand. I would wave at the general,
perpetually dressed in his shiny over-pressed gray suit, and he would wave back.
Sometimes he'd get up from his director's chair and we'd make small talk about
my writing, the war, the day's bargains. And I'd have to will my eyes not to peel
away, not to wander to where Soraya sat reading a paperback. The general and I
would say our good-byes and I'd try not to slouch as I walked away.

Sometimes she sat alone, the general off to some other row to socialize,
and I would walk by, pretending not to know her, but dying to. Sometimes she
was there with a portly middle-aged woman with pale skin and dyed red hair. I
promised myself that I would talk to her before the summer was over, but
schools reopened, the leaves reddened, yellowed, and fell, the rains of winter
swept in and wakened Baba's joints, baby leaves sprouted once more, and I still
hadn't had the heart, the dil, to even look her in the eye.

The spring quarter ended in late May 1985.1 aced all of my general
education classes, which was a minor miracle given how I'd sit in lectures and
think of the soft hook of Soraya's nose.

Then, one sweltering Sunday that summer, Baba and I were at the flea
market, sitting at our booth, fanning our faces with news papers. Despite the sun
bearing down like a branding iron, the market was crowded that day and sales
had been strong-it was only 12:30 but we'd already made $160.1 got up,
stretched, and asked Baba if he wanted a Coke. He said he'd love one.

Be careful, Amir," he said as I began to walk. "Of what, Baba?

"I am not an ahmaq, so don't play stupid with me."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Remember this," Baba said, pointing at me, "The man is a Pashtun to the
root. He has nang and namoos." Nang. Namoos. Honor and pride. The tenets of
Pashtun men. Especially when it came to the chastity of a wife. Or a daughter.

"I'm only going to get us drinks."

"Just don't embarrass me, that's all I ask."

"I won't. God, Baba."

Baba lit a cigarette and started fanning himself again.

I walked toward the concession booth initially, then turned left at the T-
shirt stand--where, for $5, you could have the face of Jesus, Elvis, Jim Morrison,
or all three, pressed on a white nylon T-shirt. Mariachi music played overhead,
and I smelled pickles and grilled meat.

I spotted the Taheris' gray van two rows from ours, next to a kiosk selling
mango-on-a-stick. She was alone, reading. White ankle-length summer dress
today. Open-toed sandals. Hair pulled back and crowned with a tulip-shaped bun.
I meant to simply walk by again and I thought I had, except suddenly I was
standing at the edge of the Taheris' white tablecloth, staring at Soraya across
curling irons and old neckties. She looked up.

"Salaam," I said. "I'm sorry to be mozahem, I didn't mean to disturb you."

Salaam.

"Is General Sahib here today?" I said. My ears were burning. I couldn't
bring myself to look her in the eye.

"He went that way," she said. Pointed to her right. The bracelet slipped
down to her elbow, silver against olive.

"Will you tell him I stopped by to pay my respects?" I said.

"I will."

"Thank you," I said. "Oh, and my name is Amir. In case you need to know.
So you can tell him. That I stopped by. To... pay my respects."

"Yes."

I shifted on my feet, cleared my throat. "I'll go now. Sorry to have
disturbed you."

"Nay, you didn't," she said.

"Oh. Good." I tipped my head and gave her a half smile. "I'll go now."
Hadn't I already said that? "Khoda hafez."

"Khoda hafez."

I began to walk. Stopped and turned. I said it before I had a chance to lose
my nerve: "Can I ask what you're reading?"

She blinked.

I held my breath. Suddenly, I felt the collective eyes of the flea market
Afghans shift to us. I imagined a hush falling. Lips stopping in mid-sentence.
Heads turning. Eyes narrowing with keen interest.

What was this? Up to that point, our encounter could have been
interpreted as a respectful inquiry, one man asking for the whereabouts of
another man. But I'd asked her a question and if she answered, we'd be... well,
we'd be chatting. Me a mojarad, a single young man, and she an unwed young
woman. One with a history, no less. This was teetering dangerously on the verge
of gossip material, and the best kind of it. Poison tongues would flap. And she
would bear the brunt of that poison, not me-I was fully aware of the Afghan
double standard that favored my gender. Not Did you see him chatting with her?
but Wooooy! Did you see how she wouldn't let him go? What a lochak!

By Afghan standards, my question had been bold. With it, I had bared
myself, and left little doubt as to my interest in her. But I was a man, and all I had
risked was a bruised ego. Bruises healed. Reputations did not. Would she take
my dare? She turned the book so the cover faced me. Wuthering Heights. "Have
you read it?" she said.

I nodded. I could feel the pulsating beat of my heart behind my eyes. "It's
a sad story."

"Sad stories make good books," she said.

"They do."

"I heard you write."

How did she know? I wondered if her father had told her, maybe she had
asked him. I immediately dismissed both scenarios as absurd. Fathers and sons
could talk freely about women. But no Afghan girl-no decent and mohtaram
Afghan girl, at least-queried her father about a young man. And no father,
especially a Pashtun with nang and namoos, would discuss a mojarad with his
daughter, not unless the fellow in question was a khastegar, a suitor, who had
done the honorable thing and sent his father to knock on the door.

Incredibly, 1 heard myself say, "Would you like to read one of my stories?

"I would like that," she said. 1 sensed an unease in her now, saw it in the
way her eyes began to flick side to side. Maybe checking for the general. I
wondered what he would say if he found me speaking for such an inappropriate
length of time with his daughter.

"Maybe I'll bring you one someday," I said. I was about to say more when
the woman I'd seen on occasion with Soraya came walking up the aisle. She was
carrying a plastic bag full of fruit. When she saw us, her eyes bounced from
Soraya to me and back. She smiled.

"Amir jan, good to see you," she said, unloading the bag on the tablecloth.
Her brow glistened with a sheen of sweat. Her red hair, coiffed like a helmet,
glittered in the sunlight--I could see bits of her scalp where the hair had thinned.
She had small green eyes buried in a cabbage-round face, capped teeth, and little
fingers like sausages. A golden Allah rested on her chest, the chain burrowed
under the skin tags and folds of her neck. "I am Jamila, Soraya jan's mother."

"Salaam, Khala jan," I said, embarrassed, as I often was around Afghans,
that she knew me and I had no idea who she was.

"How is your father?" she said.

"He's well, thank you."

"You know, your grandfather, Ghazi Sahib, the judge? Now, his uncle and
my grandfather were cousins," she said. "So you see, we're related." She smiled a
cap-toothed smile, and I noticed the right side of her mouth drooping a little. Her
eyes moved between Soraya and me again.

I'd asked Baba once why General Taheri's daughter hadn't married yet.

No suitors, Baba said. No suitable suitors, he amended. But he wouldn't say
more-Baba knew how lethal idle talk could prove to a young woman's prospects
of marrying well. Afghan men, especially those from reputable families, were
fickle creatures. A whisper here, an insinuation there, and they fled like startled
birds. So weddings had come and gone and no one had sung ahesta boro for
Soraya, no one had painted her palms with henna, no one had held a Koran over

her headdress, and it had been General Taheri who'd danced with her at every
wedding.

And now, this woman, this mother, with her heartbreakingly eager,
crooked smile and the barely veiled hope in her eyes. I cringed a little at the
position of power I'd been granted, and all because I had won at the genetic
lottery that had determined my sex.

I could never read the thoughts in the general's eyes, but I knew this
much about his wife: If I was going to have an adversary in this--whatever this
was--it would not be her.

"Sit down, Amir jan," she said. "Soraya, get him a chair, hachem. And wash
one of those peaches. They're sweet and fresh."

"Nay, thank you," I said. "I should get going. My father's waiting."

"Oh?" Khanum Taheri said, clearly impressed that I'd done the polite
thing and declined the offer. "Then here, at least have this." She threw a handful
of kiwis and a few peaches into a paper bag and insisted I take them. "Carry my
Salaam to your father. And come back to see us again."

"I will. Thank you, Khala jan," I said. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw
Soraya looking away.

"I THOUGHT YOU WERE GETTING COKES," Baba said, taking the bag of peaches
from me. He was looking at me in a simultaneously serious and playful way. I
began to make something up, but he bit into a peach and waved his hand, "Don't
bother, Amir. Just remember what I said."

THAT NIGHT IN BED, I thought of the way dappled sunlight had danced in
Soraya's eyes, and of the delicate hollows above her collarbone. I replayed our
conversation over and over in my head. Had she said I heard you write or I heard
you're a writer? Which was it? I tossed in my sheets and stared at the ceiling,
dismayed at the thought of six laborious, interminable nights of yelda until I saw
her again.

IT WENT ON LIKE THAT for a few weeks. I'd wait until the general went for a
stroll, then I'd walk past the Taheris' stand. If Khanum Taheri was there, she'd
offer me tea and a kolcha and we'd chat about Kabul in the old days, the people
we knew, her arthritis. Undoubtedly, she had noticed that my appearances
always coincided with her husband's absences, but she never let on. "Oh you just
missed your Kaka," she'd say. I actually liked it when Khanum Taheri was there,
and not just because of her amiable ways; Soraya was more relaxed, more
talkative with her mother around. As if her presence legitimized whatever was
happening between us-though certainly not to the same degree that the
general's would have. Khanum Taheri's chaperoning made our meetings, if not
gossip-proof, then less gossip-worthy, even if her borderline fawning on me
clearly embarrassed Soraya.

One day, Soraya and I were alone at their booth, talking. She was telling
me about school, how she too was working on her general education classes, at
Ohlone Junior College in Fremont.

"What will you major in?"

"I want to be a teacher," she said.

"Really? Why?"

"I've always wanted to. When we lived in Virginia, I became ESL certified
and now I teach at the public library one night a week. My mother was a teacher
too, she taught Farsi and history at Zarghoona High School for girls in Kabul."

A potbellied man in a deerstalker hat offered three dollars for a five-dollar
set of candlesticks and Soraya let him have it. She dropped the money in a little

candy box by her feet. She looked at me shyly. "I want to tell you a story," she
said, "but I'm a little embarrassed about it."

"Tell me."

"It's kind of silly."

"Please tell me."

She laughed. "Well, when I was in fourth grade in Kabul, my father hired a
woman named Ziba to help around the house. She had a sister in Iran, in Mashad,
and, since Ziba was illiterate, she'd ask me to write her sister letters once in a
while. And when the sister replied, I'd read her letter to Ziba. One day, I asked
her if she'd like to learn to read and write. She gave me this big smile, crinkling
her eyes, and said she'd like that very much. So we'd sit at the kitchen table after
I was done with my own schoolwork and I'd teach her Alef-beh. I remember
looking up sometimes in the middle of homework and seeing Ziba in the kitchen,
stirring meat in the pressure cooker, then sitting down with a pencil to do the
alphabet homework I'd assigned to her the night before.

"Anyway, within a year, Ziba could read children's books. We sat in the
yard and she read me the tales of Dara and Sara--slowly but correctly. She
started calling me Moalem Soraya, Teacher Soraya." She laughed again. "I know it
sounds childish, but the first time Ziba wrote her own letter, I knew there was
nothing else I'd ever want to be but a teacher. I was so proud of her and I felt I'd
done something really worthwhile, you know?"

"Yes," I lied. I thought of how I had used my literacy to ridicule Hassan.
How I had teased him about big words he didn't know.

"My father wants me to go to law school, my mother's always throwing
hints about medical school, but I'm going to be a teacher. Doesn't pay much here,
but it's what I want."

My mother was a teacher too," I said.

"I know," she said. "My mother told me." Then her face red denied with a
blush at what she had blurted, at the implication of her answer, that "Amir
Conversations" took place between them when I wasn't there. It took an
enormous effort to stop myself from smiling.

"I brought you something." I fished the roll of stapled pages from my back
pocket. "As promised." I handed her one of my short stories.

"Oh, you remembered," she said, actually beaming. "Thank you!" I barely
had time to register that she'd addressed me with "tu" for the first time and not
the formal "shoma," because suddenly her smile vanished. The color dropped
from her face, and her eyes fixed on something behind me. I turned around.
Came face-to-face with General Taheri.

"Amir jan. Our aspiring storyteller. What a pleasure," he said. He was
smiling thinly.

"Salaam, General Sahib," I said through heavy lips.

He moved past me, toward the booth. "What a beautiful day it is, nay?" he
said, thumb hooked in the breast pocket of his vest, the other hand extended
toward Soraya. She gave him the pages.

"They say it will rain this week. Hard to believe, isn't it?" He dropped the
rolled pages in the garbage can. Turned to me and gently put a hand on my
shoulder. We took a few steps together.

"You know, bachem, 1 have grown rather fond of you. You are a decent
boy, I really believe that, but-" he sighed and waved a hand "-even decent boys
need reminding sometimes. So it's my duty to remind you that you are among
peers in this flea market." He stopped. His expressionless eyes bore into mine.
"You see, everyone here is a storyteller." He smiled, revealing perfectly even
teeth. "Do pass my respects to your father, Amir jan."

He dropped his hand. Smiled again.

"WHAT'S WRONG?" Baba said. He was taking an elderly woman's money for a
rocking horse.

"Nothing," I said. I sat down on an old TV set. Then I told him anyway.

"Akh, Amir," he sighed.

As it turned out, I didn't get to brood too much over what had happened.

Because later that week, Baba caught a cold.

IT STARTED WITH A HACKING COUGH and the sniffles. He got over the sniffles,
but the cough persisted. He'd hack into his handkerchief, stow it in his pocket. I
kept after him to get it checked, but he'd wave me away. He hated doctors and
hospitals. To my knowledge, the only time Baba had ever gone to a doctor was
the time he'd caught malaria in India.

Then, two weeks later, I caught him coughing a wad of blood-stained
phlegm into the toilet.

"How long have you been doing that?" I said.

"What's for dinner?" he said.

"I'm taking you to the doctor."

Even though Baba was a manager at the gas station, the owner hadn't
offered him health insurance, and Baba, in his recklessness, hadn't insisted. So I

took him to the county hospital in San Jose. The sallow, puffy-eyed doctor who
saw us introduced himself as a second-year resident. "He looks younger than you
and sicker than me," Baba grumbled. The resident sent us down for a chest X-ray.
When the nurse called us back in, the resident was filling out a form.

"Take this to the front desk," he said, scribbling quickly.

"What is it?" I asked.

"A referral." Scribble scribble.

"For what?"

"Pulmonary clinic."

"What's that?"

He gave me a quick glance. Pushed up his glasses. Began scribbling again.
"He's got a spot on his right lung. I want them to check it out."

"A spot?" I said, the room suddenly too small.

"Cancer?" Baba added casually.

"Possible. It's suspicious, anyway," the doctor muttered.

"Can't you tell us more?" I asked.

"Not really. Need a CAT scan first, then see the lung doctor." He handed
me the referral form. "You said your father smokes, right?"

'Yes.

He nodded. Looked from me to Baba and back again. "They'll call you
within two weeks."

I wanted to ask him how I was supposed to live with that word,
"suspicious," for two whole weeks. How was I supposed eat, work, study? How
could he send me home with that word? I took the form and turned it in. That
night, I waited until Baba fell asleep, and then folded a blanket. I used it as a
prayer rug. Bowing my head to the ground, I recited half-forgotten verses from
the Koran-verses the mullah had made us commit to memory in Kabul-and
asked for kindness from a God I wasn't sure existed. I envied the mullah now,
envied his faith and certainty.

Two weeks passed and no one called. And when I called them, they told
me they'd lost the referral. Was I sure I had turned it in? They said they would
call in another three weeks. I raised hell and bargained the three weeks down to
one for the CAT scan, two to see the doctor.

The visit with the pulmonologist, Dr. Schneider, was going well until Baba
asked him where he was from. Dr. Schneider said Russia. Baba lost it.

"Excuse us, Doctor," I said, pulling Baba aside. Dr. Schneider smiled and
stood back, stethoscope still in hand.

"Baba, I read Dr. Schneider's biography in the waiting room. He was born
in Michigan. Michigan! He's American, a lot more American than you and I will
ever be."

"I don't care where he was born, he's Roussi," Baba said, grimacing like it
was a dirty word. "His parents were Roussi, his grandparents were Roussi. I
swear on your mother's face I'll break his arm if he tries to touch me."

Dr. Schneider's parents fled from Shorawi, don't you see? They escaped!

But Baba would hear none of it. Sometimes I think the only thing he loved
as much as his late wife was Afghanistan, his late country. I almost screamed
with frustration. Instead, I sighed and turned to Dr. Schneider. "I'm sorry, Doctor.
This isn't going to work out."

The next pulmonologist, Dr. Amani, was Iranian and Baba approved. Dr.
Amani, a soft-spoken man with a crooked mustache and a mane of gray hair, told
us he had reviewed the CAT scan results and that he would have to perform a
procedure called a bronchoscopy to get a piece of the lung mass for pathology.
He scheduled it for the following week. I thanked him as I helped Baba out of the
office, thinking that now I had to live a whole week with this new word, "mass,"
an even more ominous word than "suspicious." I wished Soraya were there with
me.

It turned out that, like Satan, cancer had many names. Baba's was called
"Oat Cell Carcinoma." Advanced. Inoperable. Baba asked Dr. Amani for a
prognosis. Dr. Amani bit his lip, used the word "grave." "There is chemotherapy,
of course," he said. "But it would only be palliative."

"What does that mean?" Baba asked.

Dr. Amani sighed. "It means it wouldn't change the outcome, just prolong
it."

"That's a clear answer, Dr. Amani. Thank you for that," Baba said. "But no
chemo-medication for me." He had the same resolved look on his face as the day
he'd dropped the stack of food stamps on Mrs. Dobbins's desk.

"But Baba-"

"Don't you challenge me in public, Amir. Ever. Who do you think you are?"

THE RAIN General Taheri had spoken about at the flea market was a few weeks
late, but when we stepped out of Dr. Amani's office, passing cars sprayed grimy

water onto the sidewalks. Baba lit a cigarette. He smoked all the way to the car
and all the way home.

As he was slipping the key into the lobby door, I said, "I wish you'd give
the chemo a chance, Baba."

Baba pocketed the keys, pulled me out of the rain and under the building's
striped awning. He kneaded me on the chest with the hand holding the cigarette.
"Bas! I've made my decision."

"What about me, Baba? What am I supposed to do?" I said, my eyes
welling up.

A look of disgust swept across his rain-soaked face. It was the same look
he'd give me when, as a kid, I'd fall, scrape my knees, and cry. It was the crying
that brought it on then, the crying that brought it on now. "You're twenty-two
years old, Amir! A grown man! You..." he opened his mouth, closed it, opened it
again, reconsidered. Above us, rain drummed on the canvas awning. "What's
going to happen to you, you say? All those years, that's what I was trying to teach
you, how to never have to ask that question."

He opened the door. Turned back to me. "And one more thing. No one
finds out about this, you hear me? No one. I don't want anybody's sympathy."
Then he disappeared into the dim lobby. He chain-smoked the rest of that day in
front of the TV. I didn't know what or whom he was defying. Me? Dr. Amani? Or
maybe the God he had never believed in.

FOR A WHILE, even cancer couldn't keep Baba from the flea market. We made
our garage sale treks on Saturdays, Baba the driver and me the navigator, and set
up our display on Sundays. Brass lamps. Baseball gloves. Ski jackets with broken
zippers. Baba greeted acquaintances from the old country and I haggled with
buyers over a dollar or two. Like any of it mattered. Like the day I would become
an orphan wasn't inching closer with each closing of shop.

Sometimes, General Taheri and his wife strolled by. The general, ever the
diplomat, greeted me with a smile and his two-handed shake. But there was a

new reticence to Khanum Taheri's demeanor. A reticence broken only by her
secret, droopy smiles and the furtive, apologetic looks she cast my way when the
general's attention was engaged elsewhere.

I remember that period as a time of many "firsts": The first time I heard
Baba moan in the bathroom. The first time I found blood on his pillow. In over
three years running the gas station, Baba had never called in sick. Another first.

By Halloween of that year, Baba was getting so tired by mid-Saturday
afternoon that he'd wait behind the wheel while I got out and bargained for junk.
By Thanksgiving, he wore out before noon. When sleighs appeared on front
lawns and fake snow on Douglas firs, Baba stayed home and I drove the VW bus
alone up and down the peninsula.

Sometimes at the flea market, Afghan acquaintances made remarks about
Baba's weight loss. At first, they were complimentary. They even asked the secret
to his diet. But the queries and compliments stopped when the weight loss
didn't. When the pounds kept shedding. And shedding. When his cheeks
hollowed. And his temples melted. And his eyes receded in their sockets.

Then, one cool Sunday shortly after New Year's Day, Baba was selling a
lampshade to a stocky Filipino man while I rummaged in the VW for a blanket to
cover his legs with.

"Hey, man, this guy needs help!" the Filipino man said with alarm. I
turned around and found Baba on the ground. His arms and legs were jerking.

"Komak!" I cried. "Somebody help!" I ran to Baba. He was frothing at the
mouth, the foamy spittle soaking his beard. His upturned eyes showed nothing
but white.

People were rushing to us. I heard someone say seizure. Some one else
yelling, "Call 911!" I heard running footsteps. The sky darkened as a crowd
gathered around us.

Baba's spittle turned red. He was biting his tongue. I kneeled beside him
and grabbed his arms and said I'm here Baba, I'm here, you'll be all right, I'm
right here. As if I could soothe the convulsions out of him. Talk them into leaving

my Baba alone. I felt a wetness on my knees. Saw Baba's bladder had let go. Shhh,
Baba jan, I'm here. Your son is right here.

THE DOCTOR, white-bearded and perfectly bald, pulled me out of the room. "I
want to go over your father's CAT scans with you," he said. He put the films up on
a viewing box in the hallway and pointed with the eraser end of his pencil to the
pictures of Baba's cancer, like a cop showing mug shots of the killer to the
victim's family. Baba's brain on those pictures looked like cross sections of a big
walnut, riddled with tennis ball-shaped gray things.

"As you can see, the cancer's metastasized," he said. "He'll have to take
steroids to reduce the swelling in his brain and anti-seizure medications. And I'd
recommend palliative radiation. Do you know what that means?"

I said I did. I'd become conversant in cancer talk.

"All right, then," he said. He checked his beeper. "I have to go, but you can
have me paged if you have any questions."

"Thank you."

I spent the night sitting on a chair next to Baba's bed.

THE NEXT MORNING, the waiting room down the hall was jammed with Afghans.
The butcher from Newark. An engineer who'd worked with Baba on his
orphanage. They filed in and paid Baba their respects in hushed tones. Wished
him a swift recovery. Baba was awake then, groggy and tired, but awake.

Midmorning, General Taheri and his wife came. Soraya followed. We
glanced at each other, looked away at the same time. "How are you, my friend?"
General Taheri said, taking Baba's hand.

Baba motioned to the IV hanging from his arm. Smiled thinly. The general
smiled back.

"You shouldn't have burdened yourselves. All of you," Baba croaked.

"It's no burden," Khanum Taheri said.

"No burden at all. More importantly, do you need anything?" General
Taheri said.

"Anything at all? Ask me like you'd ask a brother."

I remembered something Baba had said about Pashtuns once. We may be
hardheaded and I know we're far too proud, but, in the hour of need, believe me
that there's no one you'd rather have at your side than a Pashtun.

Baba shook his head on the pillow. "Your coming here has brightened my
eyes." The general smiled and squeezed Baba's hand. "How are you, Amir jan? Do
you need anything?"

The way he was looking at me, the kindness in his eyes... "Nay thank you,
General Sahib. I'm..." A lump shot up in my throat and my eyes teared over. I
bolted out of the room.

I wept in the hallway, by the viewing box where, the night before, I'd seen
the killer's face.

Baba's door opened and Soraya walked out of his room. She stood near
me. She was wearing a gray sweatshirt and jeans. Her hair was down. I wanted to
find comfort in her arms.

"I'm so sorry, Amir," she said. "We all knew something was wrong, but we
had no idea it was this."

I blotted my eyes with my sleeve. "He didn't want anyone to know.

"Do you need anything?"

"No." I tried to smile. She put her hand on mine. Our first touch. I took it.
Brought it to my face. My eyes. I let it go. "You'd better go back inside. Or your
father will come after me."

She smiled and nodded. "I should." She turned to go. "Soraya?"

II

Yes?

H

"I'm happy you came, It means... the world to me."

THEY DISCHARGED BABA two days later. They brought in a specialist called a
radiation oncologist to talk Baba into getting radiation treatment. Baba refused.
They tried to talk me into talking him into it. But I'd seen the look on Baba's face.
I thanked them, signed their forms, and took Baba home in my Ford Torino.

That night, Baba was lying on the couch, a wool blanket covering him. I
brought him hot tea and roasted almonds. Wrapped my arms around his back
and pulled him up much too easily. His shoulder blade felt like a bird's wing
under my fingers. I pulled the blanket back up to his chest where ribs stretched
his thin, sallow skin.

"Can I do anything else for you, Baba?"

Nay, bachem. Thank you.

I sat beside him. "Then I wonder if you'll do something for me. If you're
not too exhausted."

"What?"

"I want you to go khastegari. I want you to ask General Taheri for his
daughter's hand."

Baba's dry lips stretched into a smile. A spot of green on a wilted leaf. "Are
you sure?"

"More sure than I've ever been about anything."

"You've thought it over?"

"Balay, Baba."

"Then give me the phone. And my little notebook."

I blinked. "Now?"

"Then when?"

I smiled. "Okay." I gave him the phone and the little black notebook where
Baba had scribbled his Afghan friends' numbers.

He looked up the Taheris. Dialed. Brought the receiver to his ear. My heart
was doing pirouettes in my chest.

"Jamila jan? Salaam alaykum," he said. He introduced himself. Paused.
Much better, thank you. It was so gracious of you to come." He listened for a

while. Nodded. "I'll remember that, thank you. Is General Sahib home?" Pause.
"Thank you."

His eyes flicked to me. I wanted to laugh for some reason. Or scream. I
brought the ball of my hand to my mouth and bit on it. Baba laughed softly
through his nose.

"General Sahib, Salaam alaykum... Yes, much much better... Balay... You're
so kind. General Sahib, I'm calling to ask if I may pay you and Khanum Taheri a
visit tomorrow morning. It's an honorable matter... Yes... Eleven o'clock is just
fine. Until then. Khoda hafez."

He hung up. We looked at each other. I burst into giggles. Baba joined in.

BABA WET HIS HAIR and combed it back. I helped him into a clean white shirt
and knotted his tie for him, noting the two inches of empty space between the
collar button and Baba's neck. I thought of all the empty spaces Baba would leave
behind when he was gone, and I made myself think of something else. He wasn't
gone. Not yet. And this was a day for good thoughts. The jacket of his brown suit,
the one he'd worn to my graduation, hung over him--too much of Baba had
melted away to fill it anymore. I had to roll up the sleeves. I stooped and tied his
shoelaces for him.

The Taheris lived in a flat, one-story house in one of the residential areas
in Fremont known for housing a large number of Afghans. It had bay windows, a
pitched roof, and an enclosed front porch on which I saw potted geraniums. The
general's gray van was parked in the driveway.

I helped Baba out of the Ford and slipped back behind the wheel. He
leaned in the passenger window. "Be home, I'll call you in an hour."

"Okay, Baba," I said. "Good luck."

He smiled.

I drove away. In the rearview mirror, Baba was hobbling up the Taheris'
driveway for one last fatherly duty.

1 PACED THE LIVING ROOM of our apartment waiting for Baba's call. Fifteen
paces long. Ten and a half paces wide. What if the general said no? What if he
hated me? I kept going to the kitchen, checking the oven clock.

The phone rang just before noon. It was Baba.

"Well?"

"The general accepted."

I let out a burst of air. Sat down. My hands were shaking. "He did?"

"Yes, but Soraya jan is upstairs in her room. She wants to talk to you first."

"Okay."

Baba said something to someone and there was a double click as he hung
up.

"Amir?" Soraya's voice. "Salaam."

"My father said yes."

"I know," I said. I switched hands. I was smiling. "I'm so happy I don't
know what to say."

"I'm happy too, Amir. I... can't believe this is happening.

I laughed. "I know."

"Listen," she said, "I want to tell you something. Something you have to
know before..."

"I don't care what it is."

"You need to know. I don't want us to start with secrets. And I'd rather
you hear it from me."

"If it will make you feel better, tell me. But it won't change anything."

There was a long pause at the other end. "When we lived in Virginia, I ran
away with an Afghan man. I was eighteen at the time... rebellious... stupid, and...
he was into drugs... We lived together for almost a month. All the Afghans in
Virginia were talking about it.

"Padar eventually found us. He showed up at the door and... made me
come home. I was hysterical. Yelling. Screaming. Saying I hated him...

"Anyway, I came home and--" She was crying. "Excuse me." I heard her
put the phone down. Blow her nose. "Sorry," she came back on, sounding hoarse.
"When I came home, I saw my mother had had a stroke, the right side of her face
was paralyzed and... I felt so guilty. She didn't deserve that.

"Padar moved us to California shortly after." A silence followed.

How are you and your father now?" 1 said.

"We've always had our differences, we still do, but I'm grateful he came
for me that day. I really believe he saved me." She paused. "So, does what I told
you bother you?"

"A little," I said. I owed her the truth on this one. I couldn't lie to her and
say that my pride, my iftikhar, wasn't stung at all that she had been with a man,
whereas I had never taken a woman to bed. It did bother me a bit, but I had
pondered this quite a lot in the weeks before 1 asked Baba to go khastegari. And
in the end the question that always came back to me was this: How could I, of all
people, chastise someone for their past? "Does it bother you enough to change
your mind?"

"No, Soraya. Not even close," I said. "Nothing you said changes anything. I
want us to marry."

She broke into fresh tears.

I envied her. Her secret was out. Spoken. Dealt with. I opened my mouth
and almost told her how I'd betrayed Hassan, lied, driven him out, and destroyed
a forty-year relationship between Baba and Ali. But I didn't. I suspected there
were many ways in which Soraya Taheri was a better person than me. Courage
was just one of them.

THIRTEEN

When we arrived at the Taheris' home the next evening-for Lafz, the ceremony
of "giving word"-I had to park the Ford across the street. Their driveway was
already jammed with cars. I wore a navy blue suit I had bought the previous day,
after I had brought Baba home from _khastegari_. I checked my tie in the
rearview mirror.

'You look khoshteep," Baba said. Handsome.

"Thank you, Baba. Are you all right? Do you feel up to this?"

"Up to this? It's the happiest day of my life, Amir," he said, smiling tiredly.

I COULD HEAR CHATTER from the other side of the door, laughter, and Afghan
music playing softly--it sounded like a classical ghazal by Ustad Sarahang. I rang
the bell. A face peeked through the curtains of the foyer window and
disappeared. "They're here!" I heard a woman's voice say. The chatter stopped.
Someone turned off the music.

Khanum Taheri opened the door. "_Salaam alaykum_," she said, beaming.
She'd permed her hair, I saw, and wore an elegant, ankle-length black dress.
When I stepped into the foyer, her eyes moistened. "You're barely in the house
and I'm crying already, Amir jan," she said. I planted a kiss on her hand, just as
Baba had instructed me to do the night before.

She led us through a brightly lit hallway to the living room. On the wood-
paneled walls, I saw pictures of the people who would become my new family: A
young bouffant-haired Khanum Taheri and the general-Niagara Falls in the
background; Khanum Taheri in a seamless dress, the general in a narrow-
lapelled jacket and thin tie, his hair full and black; Soraya, about to board a
wooden roller coaster, waving and smiling, the sun glinting off the silver wires in
her teeth. A photo of the general, dashing in full military outfit, shaking hands
with King Hussein of Jordan. A portrait of Zahir Shah.

The living room was packed with about two dozen guests seated on chairs
placed along the walls. When Baba entered, everybody stood up. We went
around the room, Baba leading slowly, me behind him, shaking hands and
greeting the guests. The general-still in his gray suit-and Baba embraced, gently
tapping each other on the back. They said their Salaams in respectful hushed
tones.

The general held me at arm's length and smiled knowingly, as if saying,
"Now, this is the right way-the Afghan way--to do it, _bachem_." We kissed three
times on the cheek.

We sat in the crowded room, Baba and I next to each other, across from
the general and his wife. Baba's breathing had grown a little ragged, and he kept
wiping sweat off his forehead and scalp with his handkerchief. He saw me
looking at him and managed a strained grin. I'm all right," he mouthed.

In keeping with tradition, Soraya was not present.

A few moments of small talk and idle chatter followed until the general
cleared his throat. The room became quiet and everyone looked down at their
hands in respect. The general nodded toward Baba.

Baba cleared his own throat. When he began, he couldn't speak in
complete sentences without stopping to breathe. "General Sahib, Khanum Jamila
jan... it's with great humility that my son and I... have come to your home today.
You are... honorable people... from distinguished and reputable families and...
proud lineage. I come with nothing but the utmost ihtiram... and the highest
regards for you, your family names, and the memory... of your ancestors." He
stopped. Caught his breath. Wiped his brow. "Amir jan is my only son... my only
child, and he has been a good son to me. I hope he proves... worthy of your
kindness. I ask that you honor Amir jan and me... and accept my son into your
family."

The general nodded politely.

"We are honored to welcome the son of a man such as yourself into our
family," he said. "Your reputation precedes you. I was your humble admirer in
Kabul and remain so today. We are honored that your family and ours will be
joined.

"Amir jan, as for you, I welcome you to my home as a son, as the husband
of my daughter who is the noor of my eye. Your pain will be our pain, your joy
our joy. I hope that you will come to see your Khala Jamila and me as a second set
of parents, and I pray for your and our lovely Soraya jan's happiness. You both
have our blessings."

Everyone applauded, and with that signal, heads turned toward the
hallway. The moment I'd waited for.

Soraya appeared at the end. Dressed in a stunning wine-colored
traditional Afghan dress with long sleeves and gold trimmings. Baba's hand took
mine and tightened. Khanum Taheri burst into fresh tears. Slowly, Soraya came
to us, tailed by a procession of young female relatives.

She kissed my father's hands. Sat beside me at last, her eyes downcast.

The applause swelled.

ACCORDING TO TRADITION, Soraya's family would have thrown the engagement
party the Shirini-khori-or "Eating of the Sweets" ceremony. Then an
engagement period would have followed which would have lasted a few months.
Then the wedding, which would be paid for by Baba.

We all agreed that Soraya and I would forgo the Shirini-khori. Everyone
knew the reason, so no one had to actually say it: that Baba didn't have months
to live.

Soraya and I never went out alone together while preparations for the
wedding proceeded-since we weren't married yet, hadn't even had a Shirini-
khori, it was considered improper. So I had to make do with going over to the
Taheris with Baba for dinner. Sit across from Soraya at the dinner table. Imagine
what it would be like to feel her head on my chest, smell her hair. Kiss her. Make
love to her.

Baba spent $35,000, nearly the balance of his life savings, on the
awroussi, the wedding ceremony. He rented a large Afghan banquet hall in
Fremont-the man who owned it knew him from Kabul and gave him a
substantial discount. Baba paid for the chilas, our matching wedding bands, and
for the diamond ring I picked out. He bought my tuxedo, and my traditional
green suit for the nika-the swearing ceremony. For all the frenzied preparations

that went into the wedding night--most of it, blessedly, by Khanum Taheri and
her friends--! remember only a handful of moments from it.

I remember our nika. We were seated around a table, Soraya and I
dressed in green-the color of Islam, but also the color of spring and new
beginnings. I wore a suit, Soraya (the only woman at the table) a veiled long-
sleeved dress. Baba, General Taheri (in a tuxedo this time), and several of
Soraya's uncles were also present at the table. Soraya and I looked down,
solemnly respectful, casting only sideways glances at each other. The mullah
questioned the witnesses and read from the Koran. We said our oaths. Signed the
certificates. One of Soraya's uncles from Virginia, Sharif jan, Khanum Taheri's
brother, stood up and cleared his throat. Soraya had told me that he had lived in
the U.S. for more than twenty years. He worked for the INS and had an American
wife. He was also a poet. A small man with a birdlike face and fluffy hair, he read
a lengthy poem dedicated to Soraya, jotted down on hotel stationery paper. "Wah
wah, Sharif jan!" everyone exclaimed when he finished.

I remember walking toward the stage, now in my tuxedo, Soraya a veiled
pan in white, our hands locked. Baba hobbled next to me, the general and his
wife beside their daughter. A procession of uncles, aunts, and cousins followed as
we made our way through the hall, parting a sea of applauding guests, blinking at
flashing cameras. One of Soraya's cousins, Sharif jan's son, held a Koran over our
heads as we inched along. The wedding song, ahesta boro, blared from the
speakers, the same song the Russian soldier at the Mahipar checkpoint had sung
the night Baba and I left Kabul: Make morning into a key and throw it into the
well, Go slowly, my lovely moon, go slowly. Let the morning sun forget to rise in
the east, Go slowly, my lovely moon, go slowly.

I remember sitting on the sofa, set on the stage like a throne, Soraya's
hand in mine, as three hundred or so faces looked on. We did Ayena Masshaf,
where they gave us a mirror and threw a veil over our heads, so we'd be alone to
gaze at each other's reflection. Looking at Soraya's smiling face in that mirror, in
the momentary privacy of the veil, I whispered to her for the first time that I
loved her. A blush, red like henna, bloomed on her cheeks.

I picture colorful platters of chopan kabob, sholeh-goshti, and wild-orange
rice. 1 see Baba between us on the sofa, smiling. I remember sweat-drenched
men dancing the traditional attan in a circle, bouncing, spinning faster and faster
with the feverish tempo of the tabla, until all but a few dropped out of the ring
with exhaustion. I remember wishing Rahim Khan were there.

And I remember wondering if Hassan too had married. And if so, whose
face he had seen in the mirror under the veil? Whose henna-painted hands had
he held?

AROUND 2 A.M., the party moved from the banquet hall to Baba's apartment. Tea
flowed once more and music played until the neighbors called the cops. Later
that night, the sun less than an hour from rising and the guests finally gone,
Soraya and I lay together for the first time. All my life, I'd been around men. That
night, I discovered the tenderness of a woman.

IT WAS SORAYA who suggested that she move in with Baba and me.

"I thought you might want us to have our own place," I said.

"With Kaka jan as sick as he is?" she replied. Her eyes told me that was no
way to start a marriage. 1 kissed her. "Thank you."

Soraya dedicated herself to taking care of my father. She made his toast
and tea in the morning, and helped him in and out of bed. She gave him his pain
pills, washed his clothes, read him the international section of the newspaper
every afternoon, She cooked his favorite dish, potato shorwa, though he could
scarcely eat more than a few spoonfuls, and took him out every day for a brief
walk around the block. And when he became bedridden, she turned him on his
side every hour so he wouldn't get a bedsore.

One day, I came home from the pharmacy with Baba's morphine pills. Just
as I shut the door, I caught a glimpse of Soraya quickly sliding something under
Baba's blanket. "Hey, I saw that! What were you two doing?" I said.

Nothing," Soraya said, smiling.

"Liar." I lifted Baba's blanket. "What's this?" I said, though as soon as I
picked up the leather-bound book, I knew. I traced my fingers along the gold-
stitched borders. I remembered the fire works the night Rahim Khan had given it
to me, the night of my thirteenth birthday, flares sizzling and exploding into
bouquets of red, green, and yellow.

"I can't believe you can write like this," Soraya said.

Baba dragged his head off the pillow. "1 put her up to it. I hope you don't

mind."

I gave the notebook back to Soraya and left the room. Baba hated it when I

cried.

A MONTH AFTER THE WEDDING, the Taheris, Sharif, his wife Suzy, and several
of Soraya's aunts came over to our apartment for dinner. Soraya made sabzi
challow-white rice with spinach and lamb. After dinner, we all had green tea and
played cards in groups of four. Soraya and I played with Sharif and Suzy on the
coffee table, next to the couch where Baba lay under a wool blanket. He watched
me joking with Sharif, watched Soraya and me lacing our fingers together,
watched me push back a loose curl of her hair. I could see his internal smile, as
wide as the skies of Kabul on nights when the poplars shivered and the sound of
crickets swelled in the gardens.

Just before midnight, Baba asked us to help him into bed. Soraya and 1
placed his arms on our shoulders and wrapped ours around his back. When we
lowered him, he had Soraya turn off the bedside lamp. He asked us to lean in,
gave us each a kiss.

"I'll come back with your morphine and a glass of water, Kaka jan," Soraya

said.

Not tonight," he said. "There is no pain tonight.

"Okay," she said. She pulled up his blanket. We closed the door. Baba
never woke up.

THEY FILLED THE PARKING SPOTS at the mosque in Hayward. On the balding
grass field behind the building, cars and SUVs parked in crowded makeshift
rows. People had to drive three or four blocks north of the mosque to find a spot.

The men's section of the mosque was a large square room, covered with
Afghan rugs and thin mattresses placed in parallel lines. Men filed into the room,
leaving their shoes at the entrance, and sat cross-legged on the mattresses. A
mullah chanted surrahs from the Koran into a microphone. I sat by the door, the
customary position for the family of the deceased. General Taheri was seated
next to me.

Through the open door, I could see lines of cars pulling in, sunlight
winking in their windshields. They dropped off passengers, men dressed in dark
suits, women clad in black dresses, their heads covered with traditional white
hijabs.

As words from the Koran reverberated through the room, I thought of the
old story of Baba wrestling a black bear in Baluchistan. Baba had wrestled bears
his whole life. Losing his young wife. Raising a son by himself. Leaving his
beloved homeland, his watan. Poverty. Indignity. In the end, a bear had come that
he couldn't best. But even then, he had lost on his own terms.

After each round of prayers, groups of mourners lined up and greeted me
on their way out. Dutifully, I shook their hands. Many of them I barely knew. I
smiled politely, thanked them for their wishes, listened to whatever they had to
say about Baba.

??helped me build the house in Taimani..." bless him...

??no one else to turn to and he lent me...

...found me a job... barely knew me...

"...like a brother to me..."

Listening to them, I realized how much of who I was, what I was, had been
defined by Baba and the marks he had left on people's lives. My whole life, I had
been "Baba's son." Now he was gone. Baba couldn't show me the way anymore;
I'd have to find it on my own.

The thought of it terrified me.

Earlier, at the gravesite in the small Muslim section of the cemetery, I had
watched them lower Baba into the hole. The mullah and another man got into an
argument over which was the correct ayat of the Koran to recite at the gravesite.
It might have turned ugly had General Taheri not intervened. The mullah chose
an ayat and recited it, casting the other fellow nasty glances. I watched them toss
the first shovelful of dirt into the grave. Then I left. Walked to the other side of
the cemetery. Sat in the shade of a red maple.

Now the last of the mourners had paid their respects and the mosque was
empty, save for the mullah unplugging the microphone and wrapping his Koran
in green cloth. The general and I stepped out into a late-afternoon sun. We
walked down the steps, past men smoking in clusters. I heard snippets of their
conversations, a soccer game in Union City next weekend, a new Afghan
restaurant in Santa Clara. Life moving on already, leaving Baba behind.

"How are you, bachem?" General Taheri said.

I gritted my teeth. Bit back the tears that had threatened all day. "I'm
going to find Soraya," I said.

"Okay.

H

I walked to the women's side of the mosque. Soraya was standing on the
steps with her mother and a couple of ladies I recognized vaguely from the

wedding. I motioned to Soraya. She said something to her mother and came to
me.

"Can we walk?" I said.

"Sure." She took my hand.

We walked in silence down a winding gravel path lined by a row of low
hedges. We sat on a bench and watched an elderly couple kneeling beside a grave
a few rows away and placing a bouquet of daisies by the headstone. "Soraya?"

II

Yes?

H

"I'm going to miss him."

She put her hand on my lap. Baba's chila glinted on her ring finger. Behind
her, I could see Baba's mourners driving away on Mission Boulevard. Soon we'd
leave too, and for the first time ever, Baba would be all alone.

Soraya pulled me to her and the tears finally came.

BECAUSE SORAYA AND I never had an engagement period, much of what I
learned about the Taheris I learned after I married into their family. For example,
I learned that, once a month, the general suffered from blinding migraines that
lasted almost a week. When the headaches struck, the general went to his room,
undressed, turned off the light, locked the door, and didn't come out until the
pain subsided. No one was allowed to go in, no one was allowed to knock.
Eventually, he would emerge, dressed in his gray suit once more, smelling of
sleep and bed sheets, his eyes puffy and bloodshot. I learned from Soraya that he
and Khanum Taheri had slept in separate rooms for as long as she could
remember. I learned that he could be petty, such as when he'd take a bite of the
_qurma_ his wife placed before him, sigh, and push it away. "I'll make you
something else," Khanum Taheri would say, but he'd ignore her, sulk, and eat
bread and onion. This made Soraya angry and her mother cry. Soraya told me he

took antidepressants. I learned that he had kept his family on welfare and had
never held a job in the U.S., preferring to cash government-issued checks than
degrading himself with work unsuitable for a man of his stature-he saw the flea
market only as a hobby, a way to socialize with his fellow Afghans. The general
believed that, sooner or later, Afghanistan would be freed, the monarchy
restored, and his services would once again be called upon. So every day, he
donned his gray suit, wound his pocket watch, and waited.

1 learned that Khanum Taheri-whom I called Khala Jamila now-had once
been famous in Kabul for her enchanting singing voice. Though she had never
sung professionally, she had had the talent to—I learned she could sing folk
songs, ghazals, even raga, which was usually a man's domain. But as much as the
general appreciated listening to music-he owned, in fact, a considerable
collection of classical ghazal tapes by Afghan and Hindi singers-he believed the
performing of it best left to those with lesser reputations. That she never sing in
public had been one of the general's conditions when they had married. Soraya
told me that her mother had wanted to sing at our wedding, only one song, but
the general gave her one of his looks and the matter was buried. Khala Jamila
played the lotto once a week and watched Johnny Carson every night. She spent
her days in the garden, tending to her roses, geraniums, potato vines, and
orchids.

When 1 married Soraya, the flowers and Johnny Carson took a backseat. I
was the new delight in Khala Jamila's life. Unlike the general's guarded and
diplomatic manners-he didn't correct me when I continued to call him "General
Sahib"-Khala Jamila made no secret of how much she adored me. For one thing, I
listened to her impressive list of maladies, something the general had long
turned a deaf ear to. Soraya told me that, ever since her mother's stroke, every
flutter in her chest was a heart attack, every aching joint the onset of rheumatoid
arthritis, and every twitch of the eye another stroke. I remember the first time
Khala Jamila mentioned a lump in her neck to me. "I'll skip school tomorrow and
take you to the doctor," I said, to which the general smiled and said, "Then you
might as well turn in your books for good, bachem. Your khala's medical charts
are like the works of Rumi: They come in volumes."

But it wasn't just that she'd found an audience for her monologues of
illness. I firmly believed that if I had picked up a rifle and gone on a murdering
rampage, I would have still had the benefit of her unblinking love. Because I had
rid her heart of its gravest malady. I had relieved her of the greatest fear of every
Afghan mother: that no honorable khastegar would ask for her daughter's hand.
That her daughter would age alone, husbandless, childless. Every woman needed
a husband. Even if he did silence the song in her.

And, from Soraya, I learned the details of what had happened in Virginia.

We were at a wedding. Soraya's uncle, Sharif, the one who worked for the
INS, was marrying his son to an Afghan girl from Newark. The wedding was at
the same hall where, six months prior, Soraya and I had had our awroussi. We
were standing in a crowd of guests, watching the bride accept rings from the
groom's family, when we overheard two middle-aged women talking, their backs
to us.

"What a lovely bride," one of them said, "Just look at her. So maghbool,
like the moon."

"Yes," the other said. "And pure too. Virtuous. No boyfriends."

"I know. I tell you that boy did well not to marry his cousin."

Soraya broke down on the way home. I pulled the Ford off to the curb,
parked under a streetlight on Fremont Boulevard.

"It's all right," I said, pushing back her hair. "Who cares?"

"It's so fucking unfair," she barked.

"Just forget it."

"Their sons go out to nightclubs looking for meat and get their girlfriends
pregnant, they have kids out of wedlock and no one says a goddamn thing. Oh,
they're just men having fun! I make one mistake and suddenly everyone is
talking nang and namoos, and I have to have my face rubbed in it for the rest of
my life."

I wiped a tear from her jawline, just above her birthmark, with the pad of
my thumb.

"I didn't tell you," Soraya said, dabbing at her eyes, "but my father showed
up with a gun that night. He told... him... that he had two bullets in the chamber,
one for him and one for himself if I didn't come home. I was screaming, calling
my father all kinds of names, saying he couldn't keep me locked up forever, that I
wished he were dead." Fresh tears squeezed out between her lids. "I actually said
that to him, that I wished he were dead.

"When he brought me home, my mother threw her arms around me and
she was crying too. She was saying things but I couldn't understand any of it
because she was slurring her words so badly. So my father took me up to my
bedroom and sat me in front of the dresser mirror. He handed me a pair of
scissors and calmly told me to cut off all my hair. He watched while I did it.

"I didn't step out of the house for weeks. And when I did, I heard whispers
or imagined them everywhere I went. That was four years ago and three
thousand miles away and I'm still hearing them."

"Fuck 'em," I said.

She made a sound that was half sob, half laugh. "When I told you about
this on the phone the night of khastegari, I was sure you'd change your mind."

"No chance of that, Soraya."

She smiled and took my hand. "I'm so lucky to have found you. You're so
different from every Afghan guy I've met."

"Let's never talk about this again, okay?"

"Okay.

ii

I kissed her cheek and pulled away from the curb. As I drove, I wondered
why I was different. Maybe it was because I had been raised by men; I hadn't
grown up around women and had never been exposed firsthand to the double
standard with which Afghan society sometimes treated them. Maybe it was
because Baba had been such an unusual Afghan father, a liberal who had lived by

his own rules, a maverick who had disregarded or embraced societal customs as
he had seen fit.

But I think a big part of the reason I didn't care about Soraya's past was
that I had one of my own. I knew all about regret.

SHORTLY AFTER BABA'S DEATH, Soraya and I moved into a one-bedroom
apartment in Fremont, just a few blocks away from the general and Khala
Jamila's house.

Soraya's parents bought us a brown leather couch and a set of Mikasa
dishes as housewarming presents. The general gave me an additional present, a
brand new IBM typewriter. In the box, he had slipped a note written in Farsi:
Amir jan, I hope you discover many tales on these keys.

General Iqbal Taheri

I sold Baba's VW bus and, to this day, I have not gone back to the flea market. I
would drive to his gravesite every Friday, and, sometimes, I'd find a fresh
bouquet of freesias by the headstone and know Soraya had been there too.

Soraya and I settled into the routines-and minor wonders-of married
life. We shared toothbrushes and socks, passed each other the morning paper.
She slept on the right side of the bed, I preferred the left. She liked fluffy pillows,
I liked the hard ones. She ate her cereal dry, like a snack, and chased it with milk.

I got my acceptance at San Jose State that summer and declared an
English major. I took on a security job, swing shift at a furniture warehouse in
Sunnyvale. The job was dreadfully boring, but its saving grace was a
considerable one: When everyone left at 6 P.M. and shadows began to crawl
between aisles of plastic-covered sofas piled to the ceiling, I took out my books

and studied. It was in the Pine-Sol-scented office of that furniture warehouse
that I began my first novel.

Soraya joined me at San Jose State the following year and enrolled, to her
father's chagrin, in the teaching track.

"I don't know why you're wasting your talents like this," the general said
one night over dinner. "Did you know, Amir jan, that she earned nothing but A's
in high school?" He turned to her. "An intelligent girl like you could become a
lawyer, a political scientist. And, _Inshallah_, when Afghanistan is free, you could
help write the new constitution. There would be a need for young talented
Afghans like you. They might even offer you a ministry position, given your
family name."

I could see Soraya holding back, her face tightening. "I'm not a girl, Padar.

I'm a married woman. Besides, they'd need teachers too."

"Anyone can teach."

"Is there any more rice, Madar?" Soraya said.

After the general excused himself to meet some friends in Hayward, Khala
Jamila tried to console Soraya. "He means well," she said. "He just wants you to
be successful."

"So he can boast about his attorney daughter to his friends. Another
medal for the general," Soraya said.

"Such nonsense you speak!"

"Successful," Soraya hissed. "At least I'm not like him, sitting around while
other people fight the Shorawi, waiting for when the dust settles so he can move
in and reclaim his posh little government position. Teaching may not pay much,

but it's what I want to do! It's what I love, and it's a whole lot better than
collecting welfare, by the way."

Khala Jamila bit her tongue. "If he ever hears you saying that, he will
never speak to you again."

"Don't worry," Soraya snapped, tossing her napkin on the plate. "I won't
bruise his precious ego."

IN THE SUMMER of 1988, about six months before the Soviets withdrew from
Afghanistan, I finished my first novel, a father-son story set in Kabul, written
mostly with the typewriter the general had given me. I sent query letters to a
dozen agencies and was stunned one August day when I opened our mailbox and
found a request from a New York agency for the completed manuscript. I mailed
it the next day. Soraya kissed the carefully wrapped manuscript and Khala Jamila
insisted we pass it under the Koran. She told me that she was going to do nazr for
me, a vow to have a sheep slaughtered and the meat given to the poor if my book
was accepted.

"Please, no nazn, Khala jan," I said, kissing her face. "Just do _zakat_, give
the money to someone in need, okay? No sheep killing."

Six weeks later, a man named Martin Greenwalt called from New York
and offered to represent me. I only told Soraya about it. "But just because I have
an agent doesn't mean I'll get published. If Martin sells the novel, then we'll
celebrate."

A month later, Martin called and informed me I was going to be a
published novelist. When I told Soraya, she screamed.

We had a celebration dinner with Soraya's parents that night. Khala
Jamila made kofta-meatballs and white rice-and white ferni. The general, a
sheen of moisture in his eyes, said that he was proud of me. After General Taheri
and his wife left, Soraya and I celebrated with an expensive bottle of Merlot I had
bought on the way home-the general did not approve of women drinking
alcohol, and Soraya didn't drink in his presence.

"I am so proud of you," she said, raising her glass to mine. "Kaka would
have been proud too."

"I know," I said, thinking of Baba, wishing he could have seen me.

Later that night, after Soraya fell asleep--wine always made her sleepy--I
stood on the balcony and breathed in the cool summer air. I thought of Rahim
Khan and the little note of support he had written me after he'd read my first
story. And I thought of Hassan. Some day, _Inshallah_, you will be a great writer,
he had said once, and people all over the world will read your stories. There was
so much goodness in my life. So much happiness. I wondered whether I deserved
any of it.

The novel was released in the summer of that following year, 1989, and
the publisher sent me on a five-city book tour. I became a minor celebrity in the
Afghan community. That was the year that the Shorawi completed their
withdrawal from Afghanistan. It should have been a time of glory for Afghans.
Instead, the war raged on, this time between Afghans, the Mujahedin, against the
Soviet puppet government of Najibullah, and Afghan refugees kept flocking to
Pakistan. That was the year that the cold war ended, the year the Berlin Wall
came down. It was the year of Tiananmen Square. In the midst of it all,
Afghanistan was forgotten. And General Taheri, whose hopes had stirred awake
after the Soviets pulled out, went back to winding his pocket watch.

That was also the year that Soraya and 1 began trying to have a child.

THE IDEA OF FATHERHOOD unleashed a swirl of emotions in me. I found it
frightening, invigorating, daunting, and exhilarating all at the same time. What
sort of father would I make, I wondered. I wanted to be just like Baba and I
wanted to be nothing like him.

But a year passed and nothing happened. With each cycle of blood, Soraya
grew more frustrated, more impatient, more irritable. By then, Khala Jamila's
initially subtle hints had become overt, as in "Kho dega!" So! "When am I going to
sing alahoo for my little nawasa?" The general, ever the Pashtun, never made any

queries--doing so meant alluding to a sexual act between his daughter and a
man, even if the man in question had been married to her for over four years. But
his eyes perked up when Khala Jamila teased us about a baby.

"Sometimes, it takes a while," I told Soraya one night.

"A year isn't a while, Amir!" she said, in a terse voice so unlike her.

"Something's wrong, I know it."

"Then let's see a doctor."

DR. ROSEN, a round-bellied man with a plump face and small, even teeth, spoke
with a faint Eastern European accent, some thing remotely Slavic. He had a
passion for trains-his office was littered with books about the history of
railroads, model locomotives, paintings of trains trundling on tracks through
green hills and over bridges. A sign above his desk read, LIFE IS A TRAIN. GET
ON BOARD.

He laid out the plan for us. I'd get checked first. "Men are easy," he said,
fingers tapping on his mahogany desk. "A man's plumbing is like his mind:
simple, very few surprises. You ladies, on the other hand... well, God put a lot of
thought into making you." I wondered if he fed that bit about the plumbing to all
of his couples.

"Lucky us," Soraya said.

Dr. Rosen laughed. It fell a few notches short of genuine. He gave me a lab
slip and a plastic jar, handed Soraya a request for some routine blood tests. We
shook hands. "Welcome aboard," he said, as he showed us out.

I PASSED WITH FLYING COLORS.

The next few months were a blur of tests on Soraya: Basal body
temperatures, blood tests for every conceivable hormone, urine tests, something
called a "Cervical Mucus Test," ultrasounds, more blood tests, and more urine
tests.

Soraya underwent a procedure called a hysteroscopy--Dr. Rosen inserted
a telescope into Soraya's uterus and took a look around. He found nothing. "The
plumbing's clear," he announced, snapping off his latex gloves. I wished he'd stop
calling it that--we weren't bathrooms. When the tests were over, he explained
that he couldn't explain why we couldn't have kids. And, apparently, that wasn't
so unusual. It was called "Unexplained Infertility."

Then came the treatment phase. We tried a drug called Clomiphene, and
hMG, a series of shots which Soraya gave to herself. When these failed, Dr. Rosen
advised in vitro fertilization. We received a polite letter from our HMO, wishing
us the best of luck, regretting they couldn't cover the cost.

We used the advance I had received for my novel to pay for it. IVF proved
lengthy, meticulous, frustrating, and ultimately unsuccessful. After months of
sitting in waiting rooms reading magazines like Good Housekeeping and
Reader's Digest, after endless paper gowns and cold, sterile exam rooms lit by
fluorescent lights, the repeated humiliation of discussing every detail of our sex
life with a total stranger, the injections and probes and specimen collections, we
went back to Dr. Rosen and his trains.

He sat across from us, tapped his desk with his fingers, and used the word
"adoption" for the first time. Soraya cried all the way home.

Soraya broke the news to her parents the weekend after our last visit
with Dr. Rosen. We were sitting on picnic chairs in the Taheris' backyard, grilling
trout and sipping yogurt dogh. It was an early evening in March 1991. Khala
Jamila had watered the roses and her new honeysuckles, and their fragrance
mixed with the smell of cooking fish. Twice already, she had reached across her
chair to caress Soraya's hair and say, "God knows best, bachem. Maybe it wasn't
meant to be."

all.

Soraya kept looking down at her hands. She was tired, 1 knew, tired of it

"The doctor said we could adopt," she murmured.

General Taheri's head snapped up at this. He closed the barbecue lid. "He

did?"

"He said it was an option," Soraya said.

We'd talked at home about adoption. Soraya was ambivalent at best. "I
know it's silly and maybe vain," she said to me on the way to her parents' house,
"but I can't help it. I've always dreamed that I'd hold it in my arms and know my
blood had fed it for nine months, that I'd look in its eyes one day and be startled
to see you or me, that the baby would grow up and have your smile or mine.
Without that... Is that wrong?"

"No," I had said.

"Am I being selfish?"

"No, Soraya."

"Because if you really want to do it..."

"No," I said. "If we're going to do it, we shouldn't have any doubts at all
about it, and we should both be in agreement. It wouldn't be fair to the baby
otherwise."

way.

She rested her head on the window and said nothing else the rest of the

Now the general sat beside her. "Bachem, this adoption... thing, I'm not so
sure it's for us Afghans." Soraya looked at me tiredly and sighed.

"For one thing, they grow up and want to know who their natural parents
are," he said. "Nor can you blame them. Sometimes, they leave the home in which
you labored for years to provide for them so they can find the people who gave
them life. Blood is a powerful thing, bachem, never forget that."

"I don't want to talk about this anymore," Soraya said.

"I'll say one more thing," he said. I could tell he was getting revved up; we
were about to get one of the general's little speeches. "Take Amir jan, here. We all
knew his father, I know who his grandfather was in Kabul and his great¬
grandfather before him, I could sit here and trace generations of his ancestors for
you if you asked. That's why when his father-God give him peace-came
khastegari, I didn't hesitate. And believe me, his father wouldn't have agreed to
ask for your hand if he didn't know whose descendant you were. Blood is a
powerful thing, bachem, and when you adopt, you don't know whose blood
you're bringing into your house.

"Now, if you were American, it wouldn't matter. People here marry for
love, family name and ancestry never even come into the equation. They adopt
that way too, as long as the baby is healthy, everyone is happy. But we are
Afghans, bachem."

"Is the fish almost ready?" Soraya said. General Taheri's eyes lingered on

her.

He patted her knee. "Just be happy you have your health and a good
husband."

"What do you think, Amir jan?" Khala Jamila said.

I put my glass on the ledge, where a row of her potted geraniums were
dripping water. "I think I agree with General Sahib."

Reassured, the general nodded and went back to the grill.

We all had our reasons for not adopting. Soraya had hers, the general his,
and I had this: that perhaps something, someone, somewhere, had decided to
deny me fatherhood for the things I had done. Maybe this was my punishment,
and perhaps justly so. It wasn't meant to be, Khala Jamila had said. Or, maybe, it
was meant not to be.

A FEW MONTHS LATER, we used the advance for my second novel and placed a
down payment on a pretty, two-bedroom Victorian house in San Francisco's
Bernal Heights. It had a peaked roof, hardwood floors, and a tiny backyard which
ended in a sun deck and a fire pit. The general helped me refinish the deck and
paint the walls. Khala Jamila bemoaned us moving almost an hour away,
especially since she thought Soraya needed all the love and support she could
get-oblivious to the fact that her well-intended but overbearing sympathy was
precisely what was driving Soraya to move.

SOMETIMES, SORAYA SLEEPING NEXT TO ME, I lay in bed and listened to the
screen door swinging open and shut with the breeze, to the crickets chirping in
the yard. And I could almost feel the emptiness in Soraya's womb, like it was a
living, breathing thing. It had seeped into our marriage, that emptiness, into our
laughs, and our lovemaking. And late at night, in the darkness of our room, I'd
feel it rising from Soraya and settling between us. Sleeping between us.

Like a newborn child.

FOURTEEN

June 2001.

I lowered the phone into the cradle and stared at it for a long time. It wasn't until
Aflatoon startled me with a bark that I realized how quiet the room had become.
Soraya had muted the television.

"You look pale, Amir," she said from the couch, the same one her parents
had given us as a housewarming gift for our first apartment. She'd been lying on
it with Aflatoon's head nestled on her chest, her legs buried under the worn
pillows. She was half-watching a PBS special on the plight of wolves in
Minnesota, half-correcting essays from her summer-school class-she'd been
teaching at the same school now for six years. She sat up, and Aflatoon leapt
down from the couch. It was the general who had given our cocker spaniel his
name, Farsi for "Plato," because, he said, if you looked hard enough and long
enough into the dog's filmy black eyes, you'd swear he was thinking wise
thoughts.

There was a sliver of fat, just a hint of it, beneath Soraya's chin now The
past ten years had padded the curves of her hips some, and combed into her coal
black hair a few streaks of cinder gray. But she still had the face of a Grand Ball
princess, with her bird-in-flight eyebrows and nose, elegantly curved like a letter
from ancient Arabic writings.

"You took pale," Soraya repeated, placing the stack of papers on the table.

"I have to go to Pakistan."

She stood up now. "Pakistan?"

"Rahim Khan is very sick." A fist clenched inside me with those words.

"Kaka's old business partner?" She'd never met Rahim Khan, but I had
told her about him. I nodded.

Oh," she said. "I'm so sorry, Amir.

"We used to be close," I said. "When I was a kid, he was the first grown-up
I ever thought of as a friend." I pictured him and Baba drinking tea in Baba's
study, then smoking near the window, a sweetbrier-scented breeze blowing from
the garden and bending the twin columns of smoke.

"I remember you telling me that," Soraya said. She paused. "How long will
you be gone?"

"I don't know. He wants to see me."

Is it...

ii

"Yes, it's safe. I'll be all right, Soraya." It was the question she'd wanted to
ask all along-fifteen years of marriage had turned us into mind readers. "I'm
going to go for a walk."

"Should I go with you?"

"Nay, I'd rather be alone."

I DROVE TO GOLDEN GATE PARK and walked along Spreckels Lake on the
northern edge of the park. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon; the sun sparkled
on the water where dozens of miniature boats sailed, propelled by a crisp San
Francisco breeze. I sat on a park bench, watched a man toss a football to his son,
telling him to not sidearm the ball, to throw over the shoulder. I glanced up and
saw a pair of kites, red with long blue tails. They floated high above the trees on
the west end of the park, over the windmills.

I thought about a comment Rahim Khan had made just before we hung up.
Made it in passing, almost as an afterthought. I closed my eyes and saw him at
the other end of the scratchy long-distance line, saw him with his lips slightly

parted, head tilted to one side. And again, something in his bottomless black eyes
hinted at an unspoken secret between us. Except now I knew he knew. My
suspicions had been right all those years. He knew about Assef, the kite, the
money, the watch with the lightning bolt hands. He had always known.

Come. There is a way to be good again, Rahim Khan had said on the phone
just before hanging up. Said it in passing, almost as an afterthought.

A way to be good again.

WHEN I CAME HOME, Soraya was on the phone with her mother. "Won't be long,
Madarjan. A week, maybe two... Yes, you and Padar can stay with me."

Two years earlier, the general had broken his right hip. He'd had one of
his migraines again, and emerging from his room, bleary-eyed and dazed, he had
tripped on a loose carpet edge. His scream had brought Khala Jamila running
from the kitchen. "It sounded like a jaroo, a broomstick, snapping in half," she
was always fond of saying, though the doctor had said it was unlikely she'd heard
anything of the sort. The general's shattered hip-and all of the ensuing
complications, the pneumonia, blood poisoning, the protracted stay at the
nursing home-ended Khala Jamila's long-running soliloquies about her own
health. And started new ones about the general's. She'd tell anyone who would
listen that the doctors had told them his kidneys were failing. "But then they had
never seen Afghan kidneys, had they?" she'd say proudly. What I remember most
about the general's hospital stay is how Khala Jamila would wait until he fell
asleep, and then sing to him, songs I remembered from Kabul, playing on Baba's
scratchy old transistor radio.

The general's frailty-and time-had softened things between him and
Soraya too. They took walks together, went to lunch on Saturdays, and,
sometimes, the general sat in on some of her classes. He'd sit in the back of the
room, dressed in his shiny old gray suit, wooden cane across his lap, smiling.
Sometimes he even took notes.

THAT NIGHT, Soraya and I lay in bed, her back pressed to my chest, my face
buried in her hair. I remembered when we used to lay forehead to forehead,
sharing afterglow kisses and whispering until our eyes drifted closed,
whispering about tiny, curled toes, first smiles, first words, first steps. We still
did sometimes, but the whispers were about school, my new book, a giggle over
someone's ridiculous dress at a party. Our lovemaking was still good, at times
better than good, but some nights all I'd feel was a relief to be done with it, to be
free to drift away and forget, at least for a while, about the futility of what we'd
just done. She never said so, but I knew sometimes Soraya felt it too. On those
nights, we'd each roll to our side of the bed and let our own savior take us away.
Soraya's was sleep. Mine, as always, was a book.

I lay in the dark the night Rahim Khan called and traced with my eyes the
parallel silver lines on the wall made by moonlight pouring through the blinds.
At some point, maybe just before dawn, I drifted to sleep. And dreamed of
Hassan running in the snow, the hem of his green chapan dragging behind him,
snow crunching under his black rubber boots. He was yelling over his shoulder:
For you, a thousand times over!

A WEEK LATER, I sat on a window seat aboard a Pakistani International Airlines
flight, watching a pair of uniformed airline workers remove the wheel chocks.
The plane taxied out of the terminal and, soon, we were airborne, cutting
through the clouds. I rested my head against the window. Waited, in vain, for
sleep.

FIFTEEN

Three hours after my flight landed in Peshawar, I was sitting on shredded
upholstery in the backseat of a smoke-filled taxicab. My driver, a chain-smoking,
sweaty little man who introduced himself as Gholam, drove nonchalantly and

recklessly, averting collisions by the thinnest of margins, all without so much as a
pause in the incessant stream of words spewing from his mouth: ??terrible what
is happening in your country, yar. Afghani people and Pakistani people they are
like brothers, I tell you. Muslims have to help Muslims so..."

I tuned him out, switched to a polite nodding mode. I remembered
Peshawar pretty well from the few months Baba and I had spent there in 1981.
We were heading west now on Jamrud road, past the Cantonment and its lavish,
high-walled homes. The bustle of the city blurring past me reminded me of a
busier, more crowded version of the Kabul I knew, particularly of the Kocheh
Morgha, or Chicken Bazaar, where Hassan and I used to buy chutney-dipped
potatoes and cherry water. The streets were clogged with bicycle riders, milling
pedestrians, and rickshaws popping blue smoke, all weaving through a maze of
narrow lanes and alleys. Bearded vendors draped in thin blankets sold animal
skin lampshades, carpets, embroidered shawls, and copper goods from rows of
small, tightly jammed stalls. The city was bursting with sounds; the shouts of
vendors rang in my ears mingled with the blare of Hindi music, the sputtering of
rickshaws, and the jingling bells of horse-drawn carts. Rich scents, both pleasant
and not so pleasant, drifted to me through the passenger window, the spicy
aroma of pakora and the nihari Baba had loved so much blended with the sting of
diesel fumes, the stench of rot, garbage, and feces.

A little past the redbrick buildings of Peshawar University, we entered an
area my garrulous driver referred to as "Afghan Town." I saw sweetshops and
carpet vendors, kabob stalls, kids with dirt-caked hands selling cigarettes, tiny
restaurants-maps of Afghanistan painted on their windows-all interlaced with
backstreet aid agencies. "Many of your brothers in this area, yar. They are
opening businesses, but most of them are very poor." He tsk'ed his tongue and
sighed. "Anyway, we're getting close now."

I thought about the last time I had seen Rahim Khan, in 1981. He had
come to say good-bye the night Baba and I had fled Kabul. I remember Baba and
him embracing in the foyer, crying softly. When Baba and I arrived in the U.S., he
and Rahim Khan kept in touch. They would speak four or five times a year and,
sometimes, Baba would pass me the receiver. The last time I had spoken to
Rahim Khan had been shortly after Baba's death. The news had reached Kabul
and he had called. We'd only spoken for a few minutes and lost the connection.

The driver pulled up to a narrow building at a busy corner where two
winding streets intersected. I paid the driver, took my lone suitcase, and walked
up to the intricately carved door. The building had wooden balconies with open
shutters-from many of them, laundry was hanging to dry in the sun. I walked up

the creaky stairs to the second floor, down a dim hallway to the last door on the
right. Checked the address on the piece of stationery paper in my palm. Knocked.

Then, a thing made of skin and bones pretending to be Rahim Khan
opened the door.

A CREATIVE WRITING TEACHER at San Jose State used to say about cliches:
"Avoid them like the plague." Then he'd laugh at his own joke. The class laughed
along with him, but I always thought cliches got a bum rap. Because, often,
they're dead-on. But the aptness of the cliched saying is overshadowed by the
nature of the saying as a cliche. For example, the "elephant in the room" saying.
Nothing could more correctly describe the initial moments of my reunion with
Rahim Khan.

We sat on a wispy mattress set along the wall, across the window
overlooking the noisy street below. Sunlight slanted in and cast a triangular
wedge of light onto the Afghan rug on the floor. Two folding chairs rested against
one wall and a small copper samovar sat in the opposite corner. I poured us tea
from it.

"How did you find me?" I asked.

"It's not difficult to find people in America. I bought a map of the U.S., and
called up information for cities in Northern California," he said. "It's wonderfully
strange to see you as a grown man."

I smiled and dropped three sugar cubes in my tea. He liked his black and
bitter, I remembered. "Baba didn't get the chance to tell you but I got married
fifteen years ago." The truth was, by then, the cancer in Baba's brain had made
him forgetful, negligent.

'You are married? To whom?

"Her name is Soraya Taheri." I thought of her back home, worrying about
me. I was glad she wasn't alone.

"Taheri... whose daughter is she?"

I told him. His eyes brightened. "Oh, yes, I remember now. Isn't General
Taheri married to Sharif jan's sister? What was her name..."

"Jamila jan."

"Balay!" he said, smiling. "I knew Sharif jan in Kabul, long time ago, before
he moved to America."

"He's been working for the INS for years, handles a lot of Afghan cases."

"Haiiii," he sighed. "Do you and Soraya jan have children?"

"Nay."

"Oh." He slurped his tea and didn't ask more; Rahim Khan had always
been one of the most instinctive people I'd ever met.

I told him a lot about Baba, his job, the flea market, and how, at the end,
he'd died happy. I told him about my schooling, my books--four published novels
to my credit now. He smiled at this, said he had never had any doubt. I told him 1
had written short stories in the leather-bound notebook he'd given me, but he
didn't remember the notebook.

The conversation inevitably turned to the Taliban.

Is it as bad as I hear?" I said.

"Nay, it's worse. Much worse," he said. "They don't let you be human." He
pointed to a scar above his right eye cutting a crooked path through his bushy
eyebrow. "I was at a soccer game in Ghazi Stadium in 1998. Kabul against Mazar-
i-Sharif, I think, and by the way the players weren't allowed to wear shorts.
Indecent exposure, I guess." He gave a tired laugh. "Anyway, Kabul scored a goal
and the man next to me cheered loudly. Suddenly this young bearded fellow who
was patrolling the aisles, eighteen years old at most by the look of him, he
walked up to me and struck me on the forehead with the butt of his Kalashnikov.
'Do that again and I'll cut out your tongue, you old donkey!' he said." Rahim Khan
rubbed the scar with a gnarled finger. "I was old enough to be his grandfather
and I was sitting there, blood gushing down my face, apologizing to that son of a
dog."

I poured him more tea. Rahim Khan talked some more. Much of it I knew
already, some not. He told me that, as arranged between Baba and him, he had
lived in Baba's house since 1981--this I knew about. Baba had "sold" the house to
Rahim Khan shortly before he and I fled Kabul. The way Baba had seen it those
days, Afghanistan's troubles were only a temporary interruption of our way of
life--the days of parties at the Wazir Akbar Khan house and picnics in Paghman
would surely return. So he'd given the house to Rahim Khan to keep watch over
until that day.

Rahim Khan told me how, when the Northern Alliance took over Kabul
between 1992 and 1996, different factions claimed different parts of Kabul. "If
you went from the Shar-e-Nau section to Kerteh-Parwan to buy a carpet, you
risked getting shot by a sniper or getting blown up by a rocket--if you got past all
the checkpoints, that was. You practically needed a visa to go from one
neighborhood to the other. So people just stayed put, prayed the next rocket
wouldn't hit their home." He told me how people knocked holes in the walls of
their homes so they could bypass the dangerous streets and would move down
the block from hole to hole. In other parts, people moved about in underground
tunnels.

"Why didn't you leave?" 1 said.

"Kabul was my home. It still is." He snickered. "Remember the street that
went from your house to the Qishla, the military barracks next to Istiqial**
School?"

"Yes." It was the shortcut to school. I remembered the day Hassan and I
crossed it and the soldiers had teased Hassan about his mother. Hassan had cried
in the cinema later, and I'd put an arm around him.

"When the Taliban rolled in and kicked the Alliance out of Kabul, I actually
danced on that street," Rahim Khan said. "And, believe me, I wasn't alone. People
were celebrating at_Chaman_, at Deh-Mazang, greeting the Taliban in the streets,
climbing their tanks and posing for pictures with them. People were so tired of
the constant fighting, tired of the rockets, the gunfire, the explosions, tired of
watching Gulbuddin and his cohorts firing on anything that moved. The Alliance
did more damage to Kabul than the Shorawi. They destroyed your father's
orphanage, did you know that?"

"Why?" I said. "Why would they destroy an orphanage?" I remembered
sitting behind Baba the day they opened the orphanage. The wind had knocked
off his caracul hat and everyone had laughed, then stood and clapped when he'd
delivered his speech. And now it was just another pile of rubble. All the money
Baba had spent, all those nights he'd sweated over the blueprints, all the visits to
the construction site to make sure every brick, every beam, and every block was
laid just right...

"Collateral damage," Rahim Khan said. "You don't want to know, Amir jan,
what it was like sifting through the rubble of that orphanage. There were body
parts of children..."

"So when the Taliban came..."

"They were heroes," Rahim Khan said. "Peace at last."

"Yes, hope is a strange thing. Peace at last. But at what price?" A violent
coughing fit gripped Rahim Khan and rocked his gaunt body back and forth.
When he spat into his handkerchief, it immediately stained red. I thought that
was as good a time as any to address the elephant sweating with us in the tiny
room.

"How are you?" I asked. "I mean really, how are you?"

"Dying, actually," he said in a gurgling voice. Another round of coughing.
More blood on the handkerchief. He wiped his mouth, blotted his sweaty brow
from one wasted temple to the other with his sleeve, and gave me a quick glance.

When he nodded, I knew he had read the next question on my face. "Not long," he
breathed.

"How long?"

He shrugged. Coughed again. "I don't think I'll see the end of this
summer," he said.

"Let me take you home with me. I can find you a good doctor. They're
coming up with new treatments all the time. There are new drugs and
experimental treatments, we could enroll you in one..." I was rambling and 1
knew it. But it was better than crying, which I was probably going to do anyway.

He let out a chuff of laughter, revealed missing lower incisors. It was the
most tired laughter I'd ever heard. "I see America has infused you with the
optimism that has made her so great. That's very good. We're a melancholic
people, we Afghans, aren't we? Often, we wallow too much in ghamkhori and
self-pity. We give in to loss, to suffering, accept it as a fact of life, even see it as
necessary. Zendagi migzara, we say, life goes on. But I am not surrendering to
fate here, I am being pragmatic. I have seen several good doctors here and they
have given the same answer. I trust them and believe them. There is such a thing
as God's will."

"There is only what you do and what you don't do," I said.

Rahim Khan laughed. "You sounded like your father just now. I miss him
so much. But it is God's will, Amir jan. It really is." He paused. "Besides, there's
another reason I asked you to come here. I wanted to see you before I go, yes, but
something else too."

"Anything."

"You know all those years I lived in your father's house after you left?"

'Yes.

I wasn't alone for all of them. Hassan lived there with me.

"Hassan," I said. When was the last time I had spoken his name? Those
thorny old barbs of guilt bore into me once more, as if speaking his name had
broken a spell, set them free to torment me anew. Suddenly the air in Rahim
Khan's little flat was too thick, too hot, too rich with the smell of the street.

"I thought about writing you and telling you before, but I wasn't sure you
wanted to know. Was I wrong?"

The truth was no. The lie was yes. I settled for something in between. "I
don't know."

He coughed another patch of blood into the handkerchief. When he bent
his head to spit, I saw honey-crusted sores on his scalp. "I brought you here
because I am going to ask something of you. I'm going to ask you to do something
for me. But before I do, I want to tell you about Hassan. Do you understand?"

"Yes," I murmured.

"I want to tell you about him. I want to tell you everything. You will
listen?"

I nodded.

Then Rahim Khan sipped some more tea. Rested his head against the wall
and spoke.

SIXTEEN

There were a lot of reasons why I went to Hazarajat to find Hassan in 1986. The
biggest one, Allah forgive me, was that I was lonely. By then, most of my friends
and relatives had either been killed or had escaped the country to Pakistan or
Iran. I barely knew anyone in Kabul anymore, the city where I had lived my
entire life. Everybody had fled. I would take a walk in the Karteh Parwan section-
-where the melon vendors used to hang out in the old days, you remember that
spot?--and I wouldn't recognize anyone there. No one to greet, no one to sit
down with for chai, no one to share stories with, just Roussi soldiers patrolling
the streets. So eventually, I stopped going out to the city.

I would spend my days in your father's house, up in the study, reading
your mother's old books, listening to the news, watching the communist
propaganda on television. Then I would pray natnaz, cook something, eat, read
some more, pray again, and go to bed. I would rise in the morning, pray, do it all
over again.

And with my arthritis, it was getting harder for me to maintain the house.
My knees and back were always aching--I would get up in the morning and it
would take me at least an hour to shake the stiffness from my joints, especially in
the wintertime. I did not want to let your father's house go to rot; we had all had
many good times in that house, so many memories, Amir jan. It was not right--
your father had designed that house himself; it had meant so much to him, and
besides, I had promised him I would care for it when he and you left for Pakistan.
Now it was just me and the house and... I did my best. I tried to water the trees
every few days, cut the lawn, tend to the flowers, fix things that needed fixing,
but, even then, I was not a young man anymore.

But even so, I might have been able to manage. At least for a while longer.
But when news of your father's death reached me... for the first time, I felt a
terrible loneliness in that house. An unbearable emptiness.

So one day, I fueled up the Buick and drove up to Hazarajat. I remembered
that, after Ali dismissed himself from the house, your father told me he and
Hassan had moved to a small village just outside Bamiyan. Ali had a cousin there
as I recalled. I had no idea if Hassan would still be there, if anyone would even
know of him or his whereabouts. After all, it had been ten years since Ali and
Hassan had left your father's house. Hassan would have been a grown man in
1986, twenty-two, twenty-three years old. If he was even alive, that is-the

Shorawi, may they rot in hell for what they did to our watan, killed so many of
our young men. I don't have to tell you that.

But, with the grace of God, I found him there. It took very little searching-
all I had to do was ask a few questions in Bamiyan and people pointed me to his
village. I do not even recall its name, or whether it even had one. But I remember
it was a scorching summer day and I was driving up a rutted dirt road, nothing
on either side but sunbaked bushes, gnarled, spiny tree trunks, and dried grass
like pale straw. I passed a dead donkey rotting on the side of the road. And then I
turned a corner and, right in the middle of that barren land, I saw a cluster of
mud houses, beyond them nothing but broad sky and mountains like jagged
teeth.

The people in Bamiyan had told me I would find him easily-he lived in
the only house in the village that had a walled garden. The mud wall, short and
pocked with holes, enclosed the tiny house-which was really not much more
than a glorified hut. Barefoot children were playing on the street, kicking a
ragged tennis ball with a stick, and they stared when I pulled up and killed the
engine. 1 knocked on the wooden door and stepped through into a yard that had
very little in it save for a parched strawberry patch and a bare lemon tree. There
was a tandoor in the corner in the shadow of an acacia tree and I saw a man
squatting beside it. He was placing dough on a large wooden spatula and
slapping it against the walls of the _tandoor_. He dropped the dough when he
saw me. I had to make him stop kissing my hands.

"Let me look at you," I said. He stepped away. He was so tall now-I stood
on my toes and still just came up to his chin. The Bamiyan sun had toughened his
skin, and turned it several shades darker than I remembered, and he had lost a
few of his front teeth. There were sparse strands of hair on his chin. Other than
that, he had those same narrow green eyes, that scar on his upper lip, that round
face, that affable smile. You would have recognized him, Amir jan. I am sure of it.

We went inside. There was a young light-skinned Hazara woman, sewing
a shawl in a corner of the room. She was visibly expecting. "This is my wife,
Rahim Khan," Hassan said proudly. "Her name is Farzana jan." She was a shy
woman, so courteous she spoke in a voice barely higher than a whisper and she
would not raise her pretty hazel eyes to meet my gaze. But the way she was
looking at Hassan, he might as well have been sitting on the throne at the _Arg_.

"When is the baby coming?" I said after we all settled around the adobe
room. There was nothing in the room, just a frayed rug, a few dishes, a pair of
mattresses, and a lantern.

"_Inshallah_, this winter," Hassan said. "I am praying for a boy to carry on
my father's name."

"Speaking of Ah, where is he?"

Hassan dropped his gaze. He told me that Ali and his cousin--who had
owned the house-had been killed by a land mine two years before, just outside
of Bamiyan. A land mine. Is there a more Afghan way of dying, Amir jan? And for
some crazy reason, I became absolutely certain that it had been Ali's right leg-
his twisted polio leg-that had finally betrayed him and stepped on that land
mine. I was deeply saddened to hear Ah had died. Your father and I grew up
together, as you know, and Ah had been with him as long as I could remember. I
remember when we were all little, the year Ah got polio and almost died. Your
father would walk around the house all day crying.

Farzana made us shorwa with beans, turnips, and potatoes. We washed
our hands and dipped fresh _naan_ from the tandoor into the shorwa-it was the
best meal I had had in months. It was then that I asked Hassan to move to Kabul
with me. I told him about the house, how I could not care for it by myself
anymore. I told him I would pay him well, that he and his _khanum_ would be
comfortable. They looked to each other and did not say anything. Later, after we
had washed our hands and Farzana had served us grapes, Hassan said the village
was his home now; he and Farzana had made a life for themselves there.

"And Bamiyan is so close. We know people there. Forgive me, Rahim
Khan. I pray you understand."

"Of course," I said. "You have nothing to apologize for. I understand."

It was midway through tea after shorwa that Hassan asked about you. I
told him you were in America, but that I did not know much more. Hassan had so
many questions about you. Had you married? Did you have children? How tall
were you? Did you still fly kites and go to the cinema? Were you happy? He said
he had befriended an old Farsi teacher in Bamiyan who had taught him to read
and write. If he wrote you a letter, would I pass it on to you? And did I think you
would write back? I told him what I knew of you from the few phone
conversations I had had with your father, but mostly I did not know how to
answer him. Then he asked me about your father. When I told him, Hassan

buried his face in his hands and broke into tears. He wept like a child for the rest
of that night.

They insisted that I spend the night there. Farzana fixed a cot for me and
left me a glass of well water in case I got thirsty. All night, I heard her whispering
to Hassan, and heard him sobbing.

In the morning, Hassan told me he and Farzana had decided to move to
Kabul with me.

"I should not have come here," I said. "You were right, Hassan jan. You
have a zendagi, a life here. It was presumptuous of me to just show up and ask
you to drop everything. It is me who needs to be forgiven."

"We don't have that much to drop, Rahim Khan," Hassan said. His eyes
were still red and puffy. "We'll go with you. We'll help you take care of the
house."

"Are you absolutely sure?"

He nodded and dropped his head. "Agha sahib was like my second father...
God give him peace."

They piled their things in the center of a few worn rags and tied the
corners together. We loaded the bundle into the Buick. Hassan stood in the
threshold of the house and held the Koran as we all kissed it and passed under it.
Then we left for Kabul. I remember as I was pulling away, Hassan turned to take
a last look at their home.

When we got to Kabul, I discovered that Hassan had no intention of
moving into the house. "But all these rooms are empty, Hassan jan. No one is
going to live in them," I said.

But he would not. He said it was a matter of ihtiram, a matter of respect.
He and Farzana moved their things into the hut in the backyard, where he was
born. I pleaded for them to move into one of the guest bedrooms upstairs, but

Hassan would hear nothing of it. "What will Amir agha think?" he said to me.
"What will he think when he comes back to Kabul after the war and finds that I
have assumed his place in the house?" Then, in mourning for your father, Hassan
wore black for the next forty days.

I did not want them to, but the two of them did all the cooking, all the
cleaning. Hassan tended to the flowers in the garden, soaked the roots, picked off
yellowing leaves, and planted rosebushes. He painted the walls. In the house, he
swept rooms no one had slept in for years, and cleaned bathrooms no one had
bathed in. Like he was preparing the house for someone's return. Do you
remember the wall behind the row of corn your father had planted, Amir jan?
What did you and Hassan call it, "the Wall of Ailing Corn"? A rocket destroyed a
whole section of that wall in the middle of the night early that fall. Hassan rebuilt
the wall with his own hands, brick by brick, until it stood' whole again. I do not
know what I would have done if he had not been there. Then late that fall,
Farzana gave birth to a stillborn baby girl. Hassan kissed the baby's lifeless face,
and we buried her in the backyard, near the sweetbrier bushes. We covered the
little mound with leaves from the poplar trees. I said a prayer for her. Farzana
stayed in the hut all day and wailed--it is a heartbreaking sound, Amir jan, the
wailing of a mother. I pray to Allah you never hear it.

Outside the walls of that house, there was a war raging. But the three of
us, in your father's house, we made our own little haven from it. My vision
started going by the late 1980s, so I had Hassan read me your mother's books.
We would sit in the foyer, by the stove, and Hassan would read me from
_Masnawi_ or _Khayyam_, as Farzana cooked in the kitchen. And every morning,
Hassan placed a flower on the little mound by the sweetbrier bushes.

In early 1990, Farzana became pregnant again. It was that same year, in
the middle of the summer, that a woman covered in a sky blue burqa knocked on
the front gates one morning. When I walked up to the gates, she was swaying on
her feet, like she was too weak to even stand. I asked her what she wanted, but
she would not answer.

"Who are you?" I said. But she just collapsed right there in the driveway. I
yelled for Hassan and he helped me carry her into the house, to the living room.
We lay her on the sofa and took off her burqa. Beneath it, we found a toothless
woman with stringy graying hair and sores on her arms. She looked like she had
not eaten for days. But the worst of it by far was her face. Someone had taken a
knife to it and... Amir jan, the slashes cut this way and that way. One of the cuts
went from cheekbone to hairline and it had not spared her left eye on the way. It
was grotesque. I patted her brow with a wet cloth and she opened her eyes.
"Where is Hassan?" she whispered.

"I'm right here," Hassan said. He took her hand and squeezed it.

Her good eye rolled to him. "I have walked long and far to see if you are as
beautiful in the flesh as you are in my dreams. And you are. Even more." She
pulled his hand to her scarred face. "Smile for me. Please."

Hassan did and the old woman wept. "You smiled coming out of me, did
anyone ever tell you? And I wouldn't even hold you. Allah forgive me, I wouldn't
even hold you."

None of us had seen Sanaubar since she had eloped with a band of singers
and dancers in 1964, just after she had given birth to Hassan. You never saw her,
Amir, but in her youth, she was a vision. She had a dimpled smile and a walk that
drove men crazy. No one who passed her on the street, be it a man or a woman,
could look at her only once. And now...

Hassan dropped her hand and bolted out of the house. I went after him,
but he was too fast. I saw him running up the hill where you two used to play, his
feet kicking up plumes of dust. I let him go. I sat with Sanaubar all day as the sky
went from bright blue to purple. Hassan still had not come back when night fell
and moonlight bathed the clouds. Sanaubar cried that coming back had been a
mistake, maybe even a worse one than leaving. But I made her stay. Hassan
would return, I knew.

He came back the next morning, looking tired and weary, like he had not
slept all night. He took Sanaubar's hand in both of his and told her she could cry
if she wanted to but she needn't, she was home now, he said, home with her
family. He touched the scars on her face, and ran his hand through her hair.

Hassan and Farzana nursed her back to health. They fed her and washed
her clothes. I gave her one of the guest rooms upstairs. Sometimes, I would look
out the window into the yard and watch Hassan and his mother kneeling
together, picking tomatoes or trimming a rosebush, talking. They were catching
up on all the lost years, I suppose. As far as I know, he never asked where she
had been or why she had left and she never told. I guess some stories do not
need telling.

It was Sanaubar who delivered Hassan's son that winter of 1990. It had
not started snowing yet, but the winter winds were blowing through the yards,
bending the flowerbeds and rustling the leaves. I remember Sanaubar came out
of the hut holding her grandson, had him wrapped in a wool blanket. She stood
beaming under a dull gray sky tears streaming down her cheeks, the needle-cold
wind blowing her hair, and clutching that baby in her arms like she never wanted
to let go. Not this time. She handed him to Hassan and he handed him to me and I
sang the prayer of Ayat-ul-kursi in that little boy's ear.

They named him Sohrab, after Hassan's favorite hero from the
_Shahnamah_, as you know, Amir jan. He was a beautiful little boy, sweet as
sugar, and had the same temperament as his father. You should have seen
Sanaubar with that baby, Amir jan. He became the center of her existence. She
sewed clothes for him, built him toys from scraps of wood, rags, and dried grass.
When he caught a fever, she stayed up all night, and fasted for three days. She
burned isfand for him on a skillet to cast out nazar, the evil eye. By the time
Sohrab was two, he was calling her Sasa. The two of them were inseparable.

She lived to see him turn four, and then, one morning, she just did not
wake up. She looked calm, at peace, like she did not mind dying now. We buried
her in the cemetery on the hill, the one by the pomegranate tree, and I said a
prayer for her too. The loss was hard on Hassan-it always hurts more to have
and lose than to not have in the first place. But it was even harder on little
Sohrab. He kept walking around the house, looking for Sasa, but you know how
children are, they forget so quickly.

By then-that would have been 1995-the Shorawi were defeated and long
gone and Kabul belonged to Massoud, Rabbani, and the Mujahedin. The
infighting between the factions was fierce and no one knew if they would live to
see the end of the day. Our ears became accustomed to the whistle of falling
shells, to the rumble of gunfire, our eyes familiar with the sight of men digging
bodies out of piles of rubble. Kabul in those days, Amir jan, was as close as you
could get to that proverbial hell on earth. Allah was kind to us, though. The Wazir
Akbar Khan area was not attacked as much, so we did not have it as bad as some
of the other neighborhoods.

On those days when the rocket fire eased up a bit and the gunfighting was
light, Hassan would take Sohrab to the zoo to see Marjan the lion, or to the
cinema. Hassan taught him how to shoot the slingshot, and, later, by the time he
was eight, Sohrab had become deadly with that thing: He could stand on the
terrace and hit a pinecone propped on a pail halfway across the yard. Hassan
taught him to read and write-his son was not going to grow up illiterate like he
had. I grew very attached to that little boy-I had seen him take his first step,

heard him utter his first word. I bought children's books for Sohrab from the
bookstore by Cinema Park--they have destroyed that too now--and Sohrab read
them as quickly as I could get them to him. He reminded me of you, how you
loved to read when you were little, Amir jan. Sometimes, I read to him at night,
played riddles with him, taught him card tricks. I miss him terribly.

In the wintertime, Hassan took his son kite running. There were not
nearly as many kite tournaments as in the old days--no one felt safe outside for
too long--but there were still a few scattered tournaments. Hassan would prop
Sohrab on his shoulders and they would go trotting through the streets, running
kites, climbing trees where kites had dropped. You remember, Amir jan, what a
good kite runner Hassan was? He was still just as good. At the end of winter,
Hassan and Sohrab would hang the kites they had run all winter on the walls of
the main hallway. They would put them up like paintings.

I told you how we all celebrated in 1996 when the Taliban rolled in and
put an end to the daily fighting. I remember coming home that night and finding
Hassan in the kitchen, listening to the radio. He had a sober look in his eyes. I
asked him what was wrong, and he just shook his head. "God help the Hazaras
now, Rahim Khan sahib," he said.

"The war is over, Hassan," I said. "There's going to be peace, _Inshallah_,
and happiness and calm. No more rockets, no more killing, no more funerals!"
But he just turned off the radio and asked if he could get me anything before he
went to bed.

A few weeks later, the Taliban banned kite fighting. And two years later,
in 1998, they massacred the Hazaras in Mazar-i-Sharif.

SEVENTEEN

Rahim Khan slowly uncrossed his legs and leaned against the bare wall in the
wary, deliberate way of a man whose every movement triggers spikes of pain.
Outside, a donkey was braying and some one was shouting something in Urdu.
The sun was beginning to set, glittering red through the cracks between the
ramshackle buildings.

It hit me again, the enormity of what I had done that winter and that
following summer. The names rang in my head: Hassan, Sohrab, Ali, Farzana, and
Sanaubar. Hearing Rahim Khan speak Ali's name was like finding an old dusty
music box that hadn't been opened in years; the melody began to play
immediately: Who did you eat today, Babalu? Who did you eat, you slant-eyed
Babalu? I tried to conjure Ali's frozen face, to really see his tranquil eyes, but
time can be a greedy thing-sometimes it steals all the details for itself.

"Is Hassan still in that house now?" I asked.

Rahim Khan raised the teacup to his parched lips and took a sip. He then
fished an envelope from the breast pocket of his vest and handed it to me. "For
you."

I tore the sealed envelope. Inside, 1 found a Polaroid photograph and a
folded letter. I stared at the photograph for a full minute.

A tall man dressed in a white turban and a green-striped chapan stood
with a little boy in front of a set of wrought-iron gates. Sunlight slanted in from
the left, casting a shadow on half of his rotund face. He was squinting and smiling
at the camera, showing a pair of missing front teeth. Even in this blurry Polaroid,
the man in the chapan exuded a sense of self-assuredness, of ease. It was in the
way he stood, his feet slightly apart, his arms comfortably crossed on his chest,
his head titled a little toward the sun. Mostly, it was in the way he smiled.

Looking at the photo, one might have concluded that this was a man who thought
the world had been good to him. Rahim Khan was right: 1 would have recognized
him if I had bumped into him on the street. The little boy stood bare foot, one
arm wrapped around the man's thigh, his shaved head resting against his
father's hip. He too was grinning and squinting.

I unfolded the letter. It was written in Farsi. No dots were omitted, no
crosses forgotten, no words blurred together-the handwriting was almost
childlike in its neatness. I began to read: In the name of Allah the most
beneficent, the most merciful, Amir agha, with my deepest respects, Farzana jan,
Sohrab, and I pray that this latest letter finds you in good health and in the light

of Allah's good graces. Please offer my warmest thanks to Rahim Khan sahib for
carrying it to you. I am hopeful that one day I will hold one of your letters in my
hands and read of your life in America. Perhaps a photograph of you will even
grace our eyes. I have told much about you to Farzana jan and Sohrab, about us
growing up together and playing games and running in the streets. They laugh at
the stories of all the mischief you and I used to cause!

Amir agha, Alas the Afghanistan of our youth is long dead. Kindness is
gone from the land and you cannot escape the killings. Always the killings. In
Kabul, fear is everywhere, in the streets, in the stadium, in the markets, it is a
part of our lives here, Amir agha. The savages who rule our watan don't care
about human decency. The other day, I accompanied Farzana jan to the bazaar to
buy some potatoes and _naan_. She asked the vendor how much the potatoes
cost, but he did not hear her, I think he had a deaf ear. So she asked louder and
suddenly a young Talib ran over and hit her on the thighs with his wooden stick.
He struck her so hard she fell down. He was screaming at her and cursing and
saying the Ministry of Vice and Virtue does not allow women to speak loudly. She
had a large purple bruise on her leg for days but what could I do except stand
and watch my wife get beaten? If I fought, that dog would have surely put a bullet
in me, and gladly! Then what would happen to my Sohrab? The streets are full
enough already of hungry orphans and every day I thank Allah that I am alive,
not because I fear death, but because my wife has a husband and my son is not an
orphan.

I wish you could see Sohrab. He is a good boy. Rahim Khan sahib and I
have taught him to read and write so he does not grow up stupid like his father.
And can he shoot with that slingshot! I take Sohrab around Kabul sometimes and
buy him candy. There is still a monkey man in Shar-e Nau and if we run into him,
I pay him to make his monkey dance for Sohrab. You should see how he laughs!
The two of us often walk up to the cemetery on the hill. Do you remember how
we used to sit under the pomegranate tree there and read from the
_Shahnamah_? The droughts have dried the hill and the tree hasn't borne fruit in
years, but Sohrab and I still sit under its shade and I read to him from the
_Shahnamah_. It is not necessary to tell you that his favorite part is the one with
his namesake, Rostam and Sohrab. Soon he will be able to read from the book
himself. I am a very proud and very lucky father.

Amir agha, Rahim Khan sahib is quite ill. He coughs all day and I see blood
on his sleeve when he wipes his mouth. He has lost much weight and I wish he
would eat a little of the shorwa and rice that Farzana jan cooks for him. But he
only takes a bite or two and even that I think is out of courtesy to Farzana jan. I
am so worried about this dear man I pray for him every day. He is leaving for
Pakistan in a few days to consult some doctors there and, _Inshallah_, he will
return with good news. But in my heart I fear for him. Farzana jan and I have told
little Sohrab that Rahim Khan sahib is going to be well. What can we do? He is

only ten and he adores Rahim Khan sahib. They have grown so close to each
other. Rahim Khan sahib used to take him to the bazaar for balloons and biscuits
but he is too weak for that now.

I have been dreaming a lot lately, Amir agha. Some of them are
nightmares, like hanged corpses rotting in soccer fields with blood-red grass. I
wake up from those short of breath and sweaty. Mostly, though, I dream of good
things, and praise Allah for that. I dream that Rahim Khan sahib will be well. I
dream that my son will grow up to be a good person, a free person, and an
important person. I dream that lawla flowers will bloom in the streets of Kabul
again and rubab music will play in the samovar houses and kites will fly in the
skies. And I dream that someday you will return to Kabul to revisit the land of
our childhood. If you do, you will find an old faithful friend waiting for you.

May Allah be with you always.

-Hassan

I read the letter twice. I folded the note and looked at the photograph for another
minute. I pocketed both. "How is he?" I asked.

"That letter was written six months ago, a few days before I left for
Peshawar," Rahim Khan said. "I took the Polaroid the day before I left. A month
after I arrived in Peshawar, I received a telephone call from one of my neighbors
in Kabul. He told me this story: Soon after 1 took my leave, a rumor spread that a
Hazara family was living alone in the big house in Wazir Akbar Khan, or so the
Taliban claim. A pair of Talib officials came to investigate and interrogated
Hassan. They accused him of lying when Hassan told them he was living with me
even though many of the neighbors, including the one who called me, supported
Hassan's story. The Talibs said he was a liar and a thief like all Hazaras and
ordered him to get his family out of the house by sundown. Hassan protested.

But my neighbor said the Talibs were looking at the big house like-how did he
say it?-yes, like 'wolves looking at a flock of sheep.' They told Hassan they would
be moving in to supposedly keep it safe until I return. Hassan protested again.

So they took him to the street-" "No," I breathed.

--and order him to kneel-" "No. God, no.

"-and shot him in the back of the head."

"-Farzana came screaming and attacked them-" "No."

"-shot her too. Self-defense, they claimed later-" But all 1 could manage
was to whisper "No. No. No" over and over again.

I KEPT THINKING OF THAT DAY in 1974, in the hospital room, Just after
Hassan's harelip surgery. Baba, Rahim Khan, Ali, and I had huddled around
Hassan's bed, watched him examine his new lip in a handheld mirror. Now
everyone in that room was either dead or dying. Except for me.

Then I saw something else: a man dressed in a herringbone vest pressing
the muzzle of his Kalashnikov to the back of Hassan's head. The blast echoes
through the street of my father's house. Hassan slumps to the asphalt, his life of
unrequited loyalty drifting from him like the windblown kites he used to chase.

"The Taliban moved into the house," Rahim Khan said. "The pretext was
that they had evicted a trespasser. Hassan's and Farzana's murders were
dismissed as a case of self-defense. No one said a word about it. Most of it was
fear of the Taliban, I think. But no one was going to risk anything for a pair of
Hazara servants."

"What did they do with Sohrab?" I asked. I felt tired, drained. A coughing
fit gripped Rahim Khan and went on for a long time. When he finally looked up,
his face was flushed and his eyes bloodshot. "I heard he's in an orphanage
somewhere in Karteh Seh. Amir jan-" then he was coughing again. When he
stopped, he looked older than a few moments before, like he was aging with each
coughing fit. "Amir jan, I summoned you here because I wanted to see you before
I die, but that's not all."

I said nothing. I think I already knew what he was going to say.

"1 want you to go to Kabul 1 want you to bring Sohrab here/' he said.

I struggled to find the right words. I'd barely had time to deal with the fact
that Hassan was dead.

"Please hear me. I know an American pair here in Peshawar, a husband
and wife named Thomas and Betty Caldwell. They are Christians and they run a
small charity organization that they manage with private donations. Mostly they
house and feed Afghan children who have lost their parents. 1 have seen the
place.

It's clean and safe, the children are well cared for, and Mr. and Mrs.
Caldwell are kind people. They have already told me that Sohrab would be
welcome to their home and--"

"Rahim Khan, you can't be serious."

"Children are fragile, Amir jan. Kabul is already full of broken children and
I don't want Sohrab to become another."

"Rahim Khan, I don't want to go to Kabul. I can't!" I said.

"Sohrab is a gifted little boy. We can give him a new life here, new hope,
with people who would love him. Thomas agha is a good man and Betty khanum
is so kind, you should see how she treats those orphans."

"Why me? Why can't you pay someone here to go? I'll pay for it if it's a
matter of money."

"It isn't about money, Amir!" Rahim Khan roared. "I'm a dying man and I
will not be insulted! It has never been about money with me, you know that. And
why you? I think we both know why it has to be you, don't we?"

I didn't want to understand that comment, but I did. I understood it all too
well. "I have a wife in America, a home, a career, and a family. Kabul is a
dangerous place, you know that, and you'd have me risk everything for..." I
stopped.

"You know," Rahim Khan said, "one time, when you weren't around, your
father and I were talking. And you know how he always worried about you in
those days. I remember he said to me, 'Rahim, a boy who won't stand up for
himself becomes a man who can't stand up to anything.' I wonder, is that what
you've become?"

I dropped my eyes.

"What I'm asking from you is to grant an old man his dying wish," he said
gravely.

He had gambled with that comment. Played his best card. Or so I thought
then. His words hung in limbo between us, but at least he'd known what to say. I
was still searching for the right words, and I was the writer in the room. Finally, I
settled for this: "Maybe Baba was right."

"I'm sorry you think that, Amir."

I couldn't look at him. "And you don't?"

"If I did, I would not have asked you to come here."

I toyed with my wedding ring. "You've always thought too highly of me,
Rahim Khan."

"And you've always been far too hard on yourself." He hesitated. "But
there's something else. Something you don't know."

Please, Rahim Khan-

"Sanaubar wasn't Ali's first wife."

Now I looked up.

"He was married once before, to a Hazara woman from the Jaghori area.
This was long before you were born. They were married for three years."

"What does this have to do with anything?"

"She left him childless after three years and married a man in Khost. She
bore him three daughters. That's what I am trying to tell you."

I began to see where he was going. But I didn't want to hear the rest of it. I
had a good life in California, pretty Victorian home with a peaked roof, a good
marriage, a promising writing career, in-laws who loved me. I didn't need any of
this shit.

"Ali was sterile," Rahim Khan said.

"No he wasn't. He and Sanaubar had Hassan, didn't they? They had
Hassan-"

"No they didn't," Rahim Khan said.

"Yes they did!"

"No they didn't, Amir."

Then who-

I think you know who.

I felt like a man sliding down a steep cliff, clutching at shrubs and tangles
of brambles and coming up empty-handed. The room was swooping up and
down, swaying side to side. "Did Hassan know?" I said through lips that didn't
feel like my own. Rahim Khan closed his eyes. Shook his head.

"You bastards," I muttered. Stood up. "You goddamn bastards!" I
screamed. "All of you, you bunch of lying goddamn bastards!"

"Please sit down," Rahim Khan said.

"How could you hide this from me? From him?" I bellowed.

"Please think, Amir jan. It was a shameful situation. People would talk. All
that a man had back then, all that he was, was his honor, his name, and if people
talked... We couldn't tell anyone, surely you can see that." He reached for me, but
I shed his hand. Headed for the door.

"Amir jan, please don't leave."

I opened the door and turned to him. "Why? What can you possibly say to
me? I'm thirty-eight years old and I've Just found out my whole life is one big
fucking lie! What can you possibly say to make things better? Nothing. Not a
goddamn thing!"

And with that, I stormed out of the apartment.

EIGHTEEN

The sun had almost set and left the sky swathed in smothers of purple and red. I
walked down the busy, narrow street that led away from Rahim Khan's building.
The street was a noisy lane in a maze of alleyways choked with pedestrians,
bicycles, and rickshaws. Billboards hung at its corners, advertising Coca-Cola and
cigarettes; Hollywood movie posters displayed sultry actresses dancing with
handsome, brown-skinned men in fields of marigolds.

I walked into a smoky little samovar house and ordered a cup of tea. I
tilted back on the folding chair's rear legs and rubbed my face. That feeling of
sliding toward a fall was fading. But in its stead, I felt like a man who awakens in
his own house and finds all the furniture rearranged, so that every familiar nook
and cranny looks foreign now. Disoriented, he has to reevaluate his
surroundings, reorient himself.

How could I have been so blind? The signs had been there for me to see all
along; they came flying back at me now: Baba hiring Dr. Kumar to fix Hassan's
harelip. Baba never missing Hassan's birthday. 1 remembered the day we were
planting tulips, when I had asked Baba if he'd ever consider getting new
servants. Hassan's not going anywhere, he'd barked. He's staying right here with
us, where he belongs. This is his home and we're his family. He had wept, wept,
when Ah announced he and Hassan were leaving us.

The waiter placed a teacup on the table before me. Where the table's legs
crossed like an X, there was a ring of brass balls, each walnut-sized. One of the
balls had come unscrewed. I stooped and tightened it. I wished I could fix my
own life as easily. I took a gulp of the blackest tea I'd had in years and tried to
think of Soraya, of the general and Khala Jamila, of the novel that needed
finishing. I tried to watch the traffic bolting by on the street, the people milling in
and out of the little sweetshops. Tried to listen to the Qawali music playing on
the transistor radio at the next table. Anything. But I kept seeing Baba on the
night of my graduation, sitting in the Ford he'd just given me, smelling of beer
and saying, I wish Hassan had been with us today.

How could he have lied to me all those years? To Hassan? He had sat me
on his lap when I was little, looked me straight in the eyes, and said, There is only
one sin. And that is theft... When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the
truth. Hadn't he said those words to me? And now, fifteen years after I'd buried

him, I was learning that Baba had been a thief. And a thief of the worst kind,
because the things he'd stolen had been sacred: from me the right to know I had
a brother, from Hassan his identity, and from Ali his honor. His nang. His
namoos.

The questions kept coming at me: How had Baba brought himself to look
Ali in the eye? How had Ali lived in that house, day in and day out, knowing he
had been dishonored by his master in the single worst way an Afghan man can
be dishonored? And how was I going to reconcile this new image of Baba with
the one that had been imprinted on my mind for so long, that of him in his old
brown suit, hobbling up the Taheris' driveway to ask for Soraya's hand? Here is
another cliche my creative writing teacher would have scoffed at; like father, like
son. But it was true, wasn't it? As it turned out, Baba and I were more alike than
I'd ever known. We had both betrayed the people who would have given their
lives for us. And with that came this realization: that Rahim Khan had summoned
me here to atone not just for my sins but for Baba's too.

Rahim Khan said I'd always been too hard on myself. But I wondered.
True, I hadn't made Ali step on the land mine, and I hadn't brought the Taliban to
the house to shoot Hassan. But I had driven Hassan and Ah out of the house. Was
it too farfetched to imagine that things might have turned out differently if I
hadn't? Maybe Baba would have brought them along to America. Maybe Hassan
would have had a home of his own now, a job, a family, a life in a country where
no one cared that he was a Hazara, where most people didn't even know what a
Hazara was. Maybe not. But maybe so.

I can't go to Kabul, I had said to Rahim Khan. I have a wife in America, a
home, a career, and a family. But how could I pack up and go back home when
my actions may have cost Hassan a chance at those very same things? I wished
Rahim Khan hadn't called me. I wished he had let me live on in my oblivion. But
he had called me. And what Rahim Khan revealed to me changed things. Made
me see how my entire life, long before the winter of 1975, dating back to when
that singing Hazara woman was still nursing me, had been a cycle of lies,
betrayals, and secrets.

There is a way to be good again, he'd said.

A way to end the cycle.

With a little boy. An orphan. Hassan's son. Somewhere in Kabul.

ON THE RICKSHAW RIDE back to Rahim Khan's apartment, I remembered Baba
saying that my problem was that someone had always done my fighting for me. I
was thirty-eight now. My hair was receding and streaked with gray, and lately I'd
traced little crow's-feet etched around the corners of my eyes. I was older now,
but maybe not yet too old to start doing my own fighting. Baba had lied about a
lot of things as it turned out but he hadn't lied about that.

I looked at the round face in the Polaroid again, the way the sun fell on it.
My brother's face. Hassan had loved me once, loved me in a way that no one ever
had or ever would again. He was gone now, but a little part of him lived on. It was
in Kabul.

Waiting.

I FOUND RAHIM KHAN praying _namaz_ in a corner of the room. He was just a
dark silhouette bowing eastward against a blood-red sky. I waited for him to
finish.

Then I told him I was going to Kabul. Told him to call the Caldwells in the
morning.

"I'll pray for you, Amir jan," he said.

NINETEEN

Again, the car sickness. By the time we drove past the bullet-riddled sign that
read THE KHYBER PASS WELCOMES YOU, my mouth had begun to water.
Something inside my stomach churned and twisted. Farid, my driver, threw me a
cold glance. There was no empathy in his eyes.

"Can we roll down the window?" I asked.

He lit a cigarette and tucked it between the remaining two fingers of his
left hand, the one resting on the steering wheel. Keeping his black eyes on the
road, he stooped forward, picked up the screwdriver lying between his feet, and
handed it to me. 1 stuck it in the small hole in the door where the handle
belonged and turned it to roll down my window.

Farid gave me another dismissive look, this one with a hint of barely
suppressed animosity, and went back to smoking his cigarette. He hadn't said
more than a dozen words since we'd departed from Jamrud Fort.

"Tashakor," I muttered. I leaned my head out of the window and let the
cold mid-afternoon air rush past my face. The drive through the tribal lands of
the Khyber Pass, winding between cliffs of shale and limestone, was just as I
remembered it-Baba and I had driven through the broken terrain back in 1974.
The arid, imposing mountains sat along deep gorges and soared to jagged peaks.
Old fortresses, adobe-walled and crumbling, topped the crags. 1 tried to keep my
eyes glued to the snowcapped Hindu Kush on the north side, but each time my
stomach settled even a bit, the truck skidded around yet another turn, rousing a
fresh wave of nausea.

"Try a lemon."

"What?"

drive.

Lemon. Good for the sickness," Farid said. "I always bring one for this

"Nay, thank you," I said. The mere thought of adding acidity to my
stomach stirred more nausea. Farid snickered. "It's not fancy like American
medicine, I know, just an old remedy my mother taught me."

I regretted blowing my chance to warm up to him. "In that case, maybe
you should give me some."

He grabbed a paper bag from the backseat and plucked a half lemon out of
it. I bit down on it, waited a few minutes. "You were right. I feel better," I lied. As
an Afghan, I knew it was better to be miserable than rude. I forced a weak smile.

"Old Watani trick, no need for fancy medicine," he said. His tone bordered
on the surly. He flicked the ash off his cigarette and gave himself a self-satisfied
look in the rearview mirror. He was a Tajik, a lanky, dark man with a weather¬
beaten face, narrow shoulders, and a long neck punctuated by a protruding
Adam's apple that only peeked from behind his beard when he turned his head.
He was dressed much as I was, though I suppose it was really the other way
around: a rough-woven wool blanket wrapped over a gray pirhan-tumban and a
vest. On his head, he wore a brown pakol, tilted slightly to one side, like the Tajik
hero Ahmad Shah Massoud-referred to by Tajiks as "the Lion of Panjsher."

It was Rahim Khan who had introduced me to Farid in Peshawar. He told
me Farid was twenty-nine, though he had the wary, lined face of a man twenty
years older. He was born in Mazar-i-Sharif and lived there until his father moved
the family to Jalalabad when Farid was ten. At fourteen, he and his father had
joined the jihad against the Shorawi. They had fought in the Panjsher Valley for
two years until helicopter gunfire had torn the older man to pieces. Farid had
two wives and five children. "He used to have seven," Rahim Khan said with a
rueful look, but he'd lost his two youngest girls a few years earlier in a land mine
blast just outside Jalalabad, the same explosion that had severed toes from his
feet and three fingers from his left hand. After that, he had moved his wives and
children to Peshawar.

"Checkpoint," Farid grumbled. I slumped a little in my seat, arms folded
across my chest, forgetting for a moment about the nausea. But I needn't have
worried. Two Pakistani militia approached our dilapidated Land Cruiser, took a
cursory glance inside, and waved us on.

Farid was first on the list of preparations Rahim Khan and I made, a list
that included exchanging dollars for Kaldar and Afghani bills, my garment and
pakol--ironically, I'd never worn either when I'd actually lived in Afghanistan-
the Polaroid of Hassan and Sohrab, and, finally, perhaps the most important
item: an artificial beard, black and chest length, Shari'a friendly--or at least the
Taliban version of Shari'a. Rahim Khan knew of a fellow in Peshawar who
specialized in weaving them, sometimes for Western journalists who covered the
war.

Rahim Khan had wanted me to stay with him a few more days, to plan
more thoroughly. But I knew I had to leave as soon as possible. I was afraid I'd
change my mind. I was afraid I'd deliberate, ruminate, agonize, rationalize, and
talk myself into not going. I was afraid the appeal of my life in America would
draw me back, that I would wade back into that great, big river and let myself
forget, let the things I had learned these last few days sink to the bottom. I was
afraid that I'd let the waters carry me away from what I had to do. From Hassan.
From the past that had come calling. And from this one last chance at
redemption. So I left before there was any possibility of that happening. As for
Soraya, telling her I was going back to Afghanistan wasn't an option. If I had, she
would have booked herself on the next flight to Pakistan.

We had crossed the border and the signs of poverty were everywhere. On
either side of the road, I saw chains of little villages sprouting here and there, like
discarded toys among the rocks, broken mud houses and huts consisting of little
more than four wooden poles and a tattered cloth as a roof. I saw children
dressed in rags chasing a soccer ball outside the huts. A few miles later, I spotted
a cluster of men sitting on their haunches, like a row of crows, on the carcass of
an old burned-out Soviet tank, the wind fluttering the edges of the blankets
thrown around them. Behind them, a woman in a brown burqa carried a large
clay pot on her shoulder, down a rutted path toward a string of mud houses.

"Strange," I said.

"What?"

"I feel like a tourist in my own country," I said, taking in a goatherd
leading a half-dozen emaciated goats along the side of the road.

Farid snickered. Tossed his cigarette. "You still think of this place as your
country?"

"I think a part of me always will," I said, more defensively than I had
intended.

"After twenty years of living in America," he said, swerving the truck to
avoid a pothole the size of a beach ball.

I nodded. "I grew up in Afghanistan." Farid snickered again.

"Why do you do that?"

"Never mind," he murmured.

"No, I want to know. Why do you do that?"

In his rearview mirror, I saw something flash in his eyes. "You want to
know?" he sneered. "Let me imagine, Agha sahib. You probably lived in a big two-
or three-story house with a nice back yard that your gardener filled with flowers
and fruit trees. All gated, of course. Your father drove an American car. You had
servants, probably Hazaras. Your parents hired workers to decorate the house
for the fancy mehmanis they threw, so their friends would come over to drink
and boast about their travels to Europe or America. And I would bet my first
son's eyes that this is the first time you've ever worn a pakol." He grinned at me,
revealing a mouthful of prematurely rotting teeth. "Am I close?"

"Why are you saying these things?" I said.

"Because you wanted to know," he spat. He pointed to an old man dressed
in ragged clothes trudging down a dirt path, a large burlap pack filled with scrub
grass tied to his back. "That's the real Afghanistan, Agha sahib. That's the
Afghanistan I know. You? You've always been a tourist here, you just didn't know
it."

Rahim Khan had warned me not to expect a warm welcome in
Afghanistan from those who had stayed behind and fought the wars. "I'm sorry

about your father," I said. "I'm sorry about your daughters, and I'm sorry about
your hand."

"That means nothing to me," he said. He shook his head. "Why are you
coming back here anyway? Sell off your Baba's land? Pocket the money and run
back to your mother in America?"

"My mother died giving birth to me," I said.

He sighed and lit another cigarette. Said nothing.

"Pull over."

"What?"

"Pull over, goddamn it!" I said. "I'm going to be sick." I tumbled out of the
truck as it was coming to a rest on the gravel alongside the road.

BY LATE AFTERNOON, the terrain had changed from one of sun-beaten peaks
and barren cliffs to a greener, more rural landscape. The main pass had
descended from Landi Kotal through Shinwari territory to Landi Khana. We'd
entered Afghanistan at Torkham. Pine trees flanked the road, fewer than I
remembered and many of them bare, but it was good to see trees again after the
arduous drive through the Khyber Pass. We were getting closer to Jalalabad,
where Farid had a brother who would take us in for the night.

The sun hadn't quite set when we drove into Jalalabad, capital of the state
of Nangarhar, a city once renowned for its fruit and warm climate. Farid drove
past the buildings and stone houses of the city's central district. There weren't as
many palm trees there as I remembered, and some of the homes had been
reduced to roofless walls and piles of twisted clay.

Farid turned onto a narrow unpaved road and parked the Land Cruiser
along a dried-up gutter. I slid out of the truck, stretched, and took a deep breath.
In the old days, the winds swept through the irrigated plains around Jalalabad
where farmers grew sugarcane, and impregnated the city's air with a sweet
scent. I closed my eyes and searched for the sweetness. I didn't find it.

"Let's go," Farid said impatiently. We walked up the dirt road past a few
leafless poplars along a row of broken mud walls. Farid led me to a dilapidated
one-story house and knocked on the woodplank door.

A young woman with ocean-green eyes and a white scarf draped around
her face peeked out. She saw me first, flinched, spotted Farid and her eyes lit up.
"Salaam alaykum, Kaka Farid!"

"Salaam, Maryam jan," Farid replied and gave her something he'd denied
me all day: a warm smile. He planted a kiss on the top of her head. The young
woman stepped out of the way, eyeing me a little apprehensively as 1 followed
Farid into the small house.

The adobe ceiling was low, the dirt walls entirely bare, and the only light
came from a pair of lanterns set in a corner. We took off our shoes and stepped
on the straw mat that covered the floor. Along one of the walls sat three young
boys, cross-legged, on a mattress covered with a blanket with shredded borders

A tall bearded man with broad shoulders stood up to greet us. Farid and
he hugged and kissed on the cheek. Farid introduced him to me as Wahid, his
older brother. "He's from America," he said to Wahid, flicking his thumb toward
me. He left us alone and went to greet the boys.

Wahid sat with me against the wall across from the boys, who had
ambushed Farid and climbed his shoulders. Despite my protests, Wahid ordered
one of the boys to fetch another blanket so I'd be more comfortable on the floor,
and asked Maryam to bring me some tea. He asked about the ride from
Peshawar, the drive over the Khyber Pass.

"I hope you didn't come across any dozds," he said. The Khyber Pass was
as famous for its terrain as for the bandits who used that terrain to rob travelers.
Before I could answer, he winked and said in a loud voice, "Of course no dozd
would waste his time on a car as ugly as my brother's."

Farid wrestled the smallest of the three boys to the floor and tickled him
on the ribs with his good hand. The kid giggled and kicked. "At least I have a car,"
Farid panted. "How is your donkey these days?"

"My donkey is a better ride than your car."

"Khar khara mishnassah," Farid shot back. Takes a donkey to know a
donkey. They all laughed and I joined in. I heard female voices from the adjoining
room. I could see half of the room from where I sat. Maryam and an older woman
wearing a brown hijab--presumably her mother--were speaking in low voices
and pouring tea from a kettle into a pot.

"So what do you do in America, Amir agha?" Wahid asked.

"I'm a writer," I said. I thought I heard Farid chuckle at that.

"A writer?" Wahid said, clearly impressed. "Do you write about
Afghanistan?"

"Well, I have. But not currently," I said. My last novel, _A Season for
Ashes_, had been about a university professor who joins a clan of gypsies after he
finds his wife in bed with one of his students. It wasn't a bad book. Some
reviewers had called it a "good" book, and one had even used the word
"riveting." But suddenly I was embarrassed by it. I hoped Wahid wouldn't ask
what it was about.

"Maybe you should write about Afghanistan again," Wahid said. "Tell the
rest of the world what the Taliban are doing to our country."

"Well, I'm not... I'm not quite that kind of writer."

"Oh," Wahid said, nodding and blushing a bit. "You know best, of course.
It's not for me to suggest...

Just then, Maryam and the other woman came into the room with a pair of
cups and a teapot on a small platter. I stood up in respect, pressed my hand to
my chest, and bowed my head. "Salaam alaykum," I said.

The woman, who had now wrapped her hijab to conceal her lower face,
bowed her head too. "Salaam," she replied in a barely audible voice. We never
made eye contact. She poured the tea while I stood.

The woman placed the steaming cup of tea before me and exited the
room, her bare feet making no sound at all as she disappeared. I sat down and
sipped the strong black tea. Wahid finally broke the uneasy silence that followed.

"So what brings you back to Afghanistan?"

"What brings them all back to Afghanistan, dear brother?" Farid said,
speaking to Wahid but fixing me with a contemptuous gaze.

"Bas!" Wahid snapped.

"It's always the same thing," Farid said. "Sell this land, sell that house,
collect the money, and run away like a mouse. Go back to America, spend the
money on a family vacation to Mexico."

"Farid!" Wahid roared. His children, and even Farid, flinched. "Have you
forgotten your manners? This is my house! Amir agha is my guest tonight and I
will not allow you to dishonor me like this!"

Farid opened his mouth, almost said something, reconsidered and said
nothing. He slumped against the wall, muttered something under his breath, and
crossed his mutilated foot over the good one. His accusing eyes never left me.

"Forgive us, Amir agha," Wahid said. "Since childhood, my brother's
mouth has been two steps ahead of his head."

"It's my fault, really," I said, trying to smile under Farid's intense gaze. "I
am not offended. I should have explained to him my business here in
Afghanistan. I am not here to sell property. I'm going to Kabul to find a boy."

"A boy," Wahid repeated.

"Yes." I fished the Polaroid from the pocket of my shirt. Seeing Hassan's
picture again tore the fresh scab off his death. I had to turn my eyes away from it.
I handed it to Wahid. He studied the photo. Looked from me to the photo and
back again. "This boy?"

I nodded.

"This Hazara boy."

'Yes.

"What does he mean to you?"

"His father meant a lot to me. He is the man in the photo. He's dead now."

Wahid blinked. "He was a friend of yours?"

My instinct was to say yes, as if, on some deep level, I too wanted to
protect Baba's secret. But there had been enough lies already. "He was my half-
brother." I swallowed. Added, "My illegitimate half brother." I turned the teacup.
Toyed with the handle.

"I didn't mean to pry."

'You're not prying," I said.

What will you do with him?

"Take him back to Peshawar. There are people there who will take care of

him."

Wahid handed the photo back and rested his thick hand on my shoulder.
"You are an honorable man, Amir agha. A true Afghan."

I cringed inside.

"I am proud to have you in our home tonight," Wahid said. I thanked him
and chanced a glance over to Farid. He was looking down now, playing with the
frayed edges of the straw mat.

A SHORT WHILE LATER, Maryam and her mother brought two steaming bowls
of vegetable shorwa and two loaves of bread. "I'm sorry we can't offer you meat,"
Wahid said. "Only the Taliban can afford meat now."

"This looks wonderful," I said. It did too. I offered some to him, to the kids,
but Wahid said the family had eaten before we arrived. Farid and I rolled up our
sleeves, dipped our bread in the shorwa, and ate with our hands.

As I ate, I noticed Wahid's boys, all three thin with dirtcaked faces and
short-cropped brown hair under their skullcaps, stealing furtive glances at my
digital wristwatch. The youngest whispered something in his brother's ear. The
brother nodded, didn't take his eyes off my watch. The oldest of the boys-I
guessed his age at about twelve-rocked back and forth, his gaze glued to my
wrist. After dinner, after I'd washed my hands with the water Maryam poured
from a clay pot, I asked for Wahid's permission to give his boys a hadia, a gift. He
said no, but, when I insisted, he reluctantly agreed. I unsnapped the wristwatch
and gave it to the youngest of the three boys. He muttered a sheepish "Tashakor."

"It tells you the time in any city in the world/' I told him. The boys nodded
politely, passing the watch between them, taking turns trying it on. But they lost
interest and, soon, the watch sat abandoned on the straw mat.

"You COULD HAVE TOLD ME," Farid said later. The two of us were lying
next to each other on the straw mats Wahid's wife had spread for us.

"Told you what?"

"Why you've come to Afghanistan." His voice had lost the rough edge I'd
heard in it since the moment I had met him.

"You didn't ask," I said.

"You should have told me."

"You didn't ask."

He rolled to face me. Curled his arm under his head. "Maybe I will help
you find this boy."

"Thank you, Farid," I said.

"It was wrong of me to assume."

I sighed. "Don't worry. You were more right than you know."

HIS HANDS ARE TIED BEHIND HIM with roughly woven rope cutting through the
flesh of his wrists. He is blindfolded with black cloth. He is kneeling on the street,
on the edge of a gutter filled with still water, his head drooping between his

shoulders. His knees roll on the hard ground and bleed through his pants as he
rocks in prayer. It is late afternoon and his long shadow sways back and forth on
the gravel. He is muttering something under his breath. I step closer. A thousand
times over, he mutters. For you a thousand times over. Back and forth he rocks.
He lifts his face. I see a faint scar above his upper lip.

We are not alone.

I see the barrel first. Then the man standing behind him. He is tall,
dressed in a herringbone vest and a black turban. He looks down at the
blindfolded man before him with eyes that show nothing but a vast, cavernous
emptiness. He takes a step back and raises the barrel. Places it on the back of the
kneeling man's head. For a moment, fading sunlight catches in the metal and
twinkles.

The rifle roars with a deafening crack.

I follow the barrel on its upward arc. I see the face behind the plume of
smoke swirling from the muzzle. I am the man in the herringbone vest.

I woke up with a scream trapped in my throat.

I STEPPED OUTSIDE. Stood in the silver tarnish of a half-moon and glanced up to
a sky riddled with stars. Crickets chirped in the shuttered darkness and a wind
wafted through the trees. The ground was cool under my bare feet and suddenly,
for the first time since we had crossed the border, I felt like I was back. After all
these years, I was home again, standing on the soil of my ancestors. This was the
soil on which my great-grandfather had married his third wife a year before
dying in the cholera epidemic that hit Kabul in 1915. She'd borne him what his
first two wives had failed to, a son at last. It was on this soil that my grandfather
had gone on a hunting trip with King Nadir Shah and shot a deer. My mother had
died on this soil. And on this soil, I had fought for my father's love.

I sat against one of the house's clay walls. The kinship I felt suddenly for
the old land... it surprised me. I'd been gone long enough to forget and be
forgotten. I had a home in a land that might as well be in another galaxy to the

people sleeping on the other side of the wall I leaned against. I thought I had
forgotten about this land. But I hadn't. And, under the bony glow of a half-moon, I
sensed Afghanistan humming under my feet. Maybe Afghanistan hadn't forgotten
me either.

I looked westward and marveled that, somewhere over those mountains,
Kabul still existed. It really existed, not just as an old memory, or as the heading
of an AP story on page 15 of the San Francisco Chronicle. Somewhere over those
mountains in the west slept the city where my harelipped brother and I had run
kites. Somewhere over there, the blindfolded man from my dream had died a
needless death. Once, over those mountains, I had made a choice. And now, a
quarter of a century later, that choice had landed me right back on this soil.

I was about to go back inside when I heard voices coming from the house.
I recognized one as Wahid's.

"-nothing left for the children."

"We're hungry but we're not savages! He is a guest! What was I supposed
to do?" he said in a strained voice.

"—to find something tomorrow" She sounded near tears. "What do I feed—
" I tiptoed away. I understood now why the boys hadn't shown any interest in
the watch. They hadn't been staring at the watch at all. They'd been staring at my
food.

WE SAID OUR GOOD-BYES early the next morning. Just before I climbed into the
Land Cruiser, I thanked Wahid for his hospitality. He pointed to the little house
behind him. "This is your home," he said. His three sons were standing in the
doorway watching us. The little one was wearing the watch-it dangled around
his twiggy wrist.

I glanced in the side-view mirror as we pulled away. Wahid stood
surrounded by his boys in a cloud of dust whipped up by the truck. It occurred to
me that, in a different world, those boys wouldn't have been too hungry to chase
after the car.

Earlier that morning, when I was certain no one was looking, I did
something I had done twenty-six years earlier: I planted a fistful of crumpled
money under a mattress.

TWENTY

Farid had warned me. He had. But, as it turned out, he had wasted his breath.

We were driving down the cratered road that winds from Jalalabad to
Kabul. The last time I'd traveled that road was in a tarpaulin-covered truck going
the other way. Baba had nearly gotten himself shot by a singing, stoned Roussi
officer-Baba had made me so mad that night, so scared, and, ultimately, so
proud. The trek between Kabul and Jalalabad, a bone-jarring ride down a
teetering pass snaking through the rocks, had become a relic now, a relic of two
wars. Twenty years earlier, I had seen some of the first war with my own eyes.
Grim reminders of it were strewn along the road: burned carcasses of old Soviet
tanks, overturned military trucks gone to rust, a crushed Russian jeep that had
plunged over the mountainside. The second war, I had watched on my TV screen.
And now I was seeing it through Farid's eyes.

Swerving effortlessly around potholes in the middle of the broken road,
Farid was a man in his element. He had become much chattier since our
overnight stay at Wahid's house. He had me sit in the passenger seat and looked
at me when he spoke. He even smiled once or twice. Maneuvering the steering
wheel with his mangled hand, he pointed to mud-hut villages along the way
where he'd known people years before. Most of those people, he said, were
either dead or in refugee camps in Pakistan. "And sometimes the dead are
luckier," he said.

He pointed to the crumbled, charred remains of a tiny village. It was just a
tuft of blackened, roofless walls now. I saw a dog sleeping along one of the walls.
"I had a friend there once," Farid said. "He was a very good bicycle repairman. He
played the tabla well too. The Taliban killed him and his family and burned the
village."

We drove past the burned village, and the dog didn't move.

IN THE OLD DAYS, the drive from Jalalabad to Kabul took two hours, maybe a
little more. It took Farid and me over four hours to reach Kabul. And when we
did... Farid warned me just after we passed the Mahipar dam.

"Kabul is not the way you remember it," he said.

"So I hear."

Farid gave me a look that said hearing is not the same as seeing. And he
was right. Because when Kabul finally did unroll before us, I was certain,
absolutely certain, that he had taken a wrong turn somewhere. Farid must have
seen my stupefied expression; shuttling people back and forth to Kabul, he would
have become familiar with that expression on the faces of those who hadn't seen
Kabul for a long time.

He patted me on the shoulder. "Welcome back," he said morosely.

RUBBLE AND BEGGARS. Everywhere I looked, that was what I saw. I
remembered beggars in the old days too--Baba always carried an extra handful
of Afghani bills in his pocket just for them; I'd never seen him deny a peddler.
Now, though, they squatted at every street corner, dressed in shredded burlap
rags, mud-caked hands held out for a coin. And the beggars were mostly children
now, thin and grim-faced, some no older than five or six. They sat in the laps of
their burqa-clad mothers alongside gutters at busy street corners and chanted

"Bakhshesh, bakhshesh!" And something else, something I hadn't noticed right
away: Hardly any of them sat with an adult male--the wars had made fathers a
rare commodity in Afghanistan.

We were driving westbound toward the Karteh-Seh district on what I
remembered as a major thoroughfare in the seventies: Jadeh Maywand. Just
north of us was the bone-dry Kabul River. On the hills to the south stood the
broken old city wall. Just east of it was the Bala Hissar Fort-the ancient citadel
that the warlord Dostum had occupied in 1992-on the Shirdarwaza mountain
range, the same mountains from which Mujahedin forces had showered Kabul
with rockets between 1992 and 1996, inflicting much of the damage I was
witnessing now. The Shirdarwaza range stretched all the way west. It was from
those mountains that I remember the firing of the Topeh chasht, the "noon
cannon." It went off every day to announce noontime, and also to signal the end
of daylight fasting during the month of Ramadan. You'd hear the roar of that
cannon all through the city in those days.

"I used to come here to Jadeh Maywand when I was a kid," I mumbled.
"There used to be shops here and hotels. Neon lights and restaurants. I used to
buy kites from an old man named Saifo. He ran a little kite shop by the old police
headquarters."

"The police headquarters is still there," Farid said. "No shortage of police
in this city But you won't find kites or kite shops on Jadeh Maywand or anywhere
else in Kabul. Those days are over."

Jadeh Maywand had turned into a giant sand castle. The buildings that
hadn't entirely collapsed barely stood, with caved in roofs and walls pierced with
rockets shells. Entire blocks had been obliterated to rubble. I saw a bullet-pocked
sign half buried at an angle in a heap of debris. It read DRINK COCA C0-. I saw
children playing in the ruins of a windowless building amid jagged stumps of
brick and stone. Bicycle riders and mule-drawn carts swerved around kids, stray
dogs, and piles of debris. A haze of dust hovered over the city and, across the
river, a single plume of smoke rose to the sky.

"Where are the trees?" I said.

"People cut them down for firewood in the winter," Farid said. "The
Shorawi cut a lot of them down too."

'Why?

"Snipers used to hide in them."

A sadness came over me. Returning to Kabul was like running into an old,
forgotten friend and seeing that life hadn't been good to him, that he'd become
homeless and destitute.

"My father built an orphanage in Shar-e-Kohna, the old city, south of
here," I said.

"I remember it," Farid said. "It was destroyed a few years ago."

"Can you pull over?" I said. "I want to take a quick walk here."

Farid parked along the curb on a small backstreet next to a ramshackle,
abandoned building with no door. "That used to be a pharmacy," Farid muttered
as we exited the truck. We walked back to Jadeh Maywand and turned right,
heading west. "What's that smell?" I said. Something was making my eyes water.

"Diesel," Farid replied. "The city's generators are always going down, so
electricity is unreliable, and people use diesel fuel."

"Diesel. Remember what this street smelled like in the old days?"

Farid smiled. "Kabob."

"Lamb kabob," I said.

"Lamb," Farid said, tasting the word in his mouth. "The only people in
Kabul who get to eat lamb now are the Taliban." He pulled on my sleeve.
"Speaking of which..."

A vehicle was approaching us. "Beard Patrol," Farid murmured.

That was the first time I saw the Taliban. I'd seen them on TV on the
Internet, on the cover of magazines, and in newspapers. But here I was now, less
than fifty feet from them, telling myself that the sudden taste in my mouth wasn't
unadulterated, naked fear. Telling myself my flesh hadn't suddenly shrunk
against my bones and my heart wasn't battering. Here they came. In all their
glory.

The red Toyota pickup truck idled past us. A handful of stern-faced young
men sat on their haunches in the cab, Kalashnikovs slung on their shoulders.
They all wore beards and black turbans. One of them, a dark-skinned man in his
early twenties with thick, knitted eyebrows twirled a whip in his hand and
rhythmically swatted the side of the truck with it. His roaming eyes fell on me.
Held my gaze. I'd never felt so naked in my entire life. Then the Talib spat
tobacco-stained spittle and looked away. I found I could breathe again. The truck
rolled down Jadeh Maywand, leaving in its trail a cloud of dust.

"What is the matter with you?" Farid hissed.

"What?"

"Don't ever stare at them! Do you understand me? Never!"

"I didn't mean to," I said.

"Your friend is quite right, Agha. You might as well poke a rabid dog with
a stick," someone said. This new voice belonged to an old beggar sitting barefoot
on the steps of a bullet-scarred building. He wore a threadbare chapan worn to
frayed shreds and a dirt-crusted turban. His left eyelid drooped over an empty
socket. With an arthritic hand, he pointed to the direction the red truck had gone.
"They drive around looking. Looking and hoping that someone will provoke
them. Sooner or later, someone always obliges. Then the dogs feast and the day's
boredom is broken at last and everyone says 'Allah-u-akbar!' And on those days
when no one offends, well, there is always random violence, isn't there?"

Keep your eyes on your feet when the Talibs are near," Farid said.

"Your friend dispenses good advice/' the old beggar chimed in. He barked
a wet cough and spat in a soiled handkerchief. "Forgive me, but could you spare a
few Afghanis?" he breathed.

"Bas. Let's go," Farid said, pulling me by the arm.

I handed the old man a hundred thousand Afghanis, or the equivalent of
about three dollars. When he leaned forward to take the money, his stench--like
sour milk and feet that hadn't been washed in weeks--flooded my nostrils and
made my gorge rise. He hurriedly slipped the money in his waist, his lone eye
darting side to side. "A world of thanks for your benevolence, Agha sahib."

"Do you know where the orphanage is in Karteh-Seh?" I said.

"It's not hard to find, it's just west of Darulaman Boulevard," he said. "The
children were moved from here to Karteh-Seh after the rockets hit the old
orphanage. Which is like saving someone from the lion's cage and throwing them
in the tiger's."

"Thank you, Agha," I said. I turned to go.

"That was your first time, nay?"

"I'm sorry?"

"The first time you saw a Talib."

I said nothing. The old beggar nodded and smiled. Revealed a handful of
remaining teeth, all crooked and yellow. "I remember the first time I saw them
rolling into Kabul. What a joyous day that was!" he said. "An end to the killing!
Wah wah! But like the poet says: 'How seamless seemed love and then came
trouble!"

A smile sprouted on my face. "1 know that ghazal. That's Hafez.

"Yes it is. Indeed," the old man replied. "I should know. I used to teach it at
the university."

"You did?"

The old man coughed. "From 1958 to 1996.1 taught Hafez, Khayyam,
Rumi, Beydel, Jami, Saadi. Once, I was even a guest lecturer in Tehran, 1971 that
was. I gave a lecture on the mystic Beydel. I remember how they all stood and
clapped. Ha!" He shook his head. "But you saw those young men in the truck.
What value do you think they see in Sufism?"

"My mother taught at the university," I said.

"And what was her name?"

"Sofia Akrami."

His eye managed to twinkle through the veil of cataracts. "The desert
weed lives on, but the flower of spring blooms and wilts.' Such grace, such
dignity, such a tragedy."

"You knew my mother?" I asked, kneeling before the old man.

"Yes indeed," the old beggar said. "We used to sit and talk after class. The
last time was on a rainy day just before final exams when we shared a marvelous
slice of almond cake together. Almond cake with hot tea and honey. She was
rather obviously pregnant by then, and all the more beautiful for it. I will never
forget what she said to me that day."

"What? Please tell me." Baba had always described my mother to me in
broad strokes, like, "She was a great woman." But what I had always thirsted for
were the details: the way her hair glinted in the sunlight, her favorite ice cream
flavor, the songs she liked to hum, did she bite her nails? Baba took his memories

of her to the grave with him. Maybe speaking her name would have reminded
him of his guilt, of what he had done so soon after she had died. Or maybe his
loss had been so great, his pain so deep, he couldn't bear to talk about her. Maybe
both.

"She said, 'I'm so afraid.' And 1 said, 'Why?,' and she said, 'Because I'm so
profoundly happy, Dr. Rasul. Happiness like this is frightening.' I asked her why
and she said, 'They only let you be this happy if they're preparing to take
something from you,' and I said, 'Hush up, now. Enough of this silliness."

Farid took my arm. "We should go, Amir agha," he said softly. I snatched
my arm away. "What else? What else did she say?"

The old man's features softened. "I wish I remembered for you. But I
don't. Your mother passed away a long time ago and my memory is as shattered
as these buildings. I am sorry."

"But even a small thing, anything at all."

The old man smiled. "I'll try to remember and that's a promise. Come back
and find me."

"Thank you," I said. "Thank you so much." And I meant it. Now I knew my
mother had liked almond cake with honey and hot tea, that she'd once used the
word "profoundly," that she'd fretted about her happiness. I had just learned
more about my mother from this old man on the street than I ever did from Baba.

Walking back to the truck, neither one of us commented about what most
non-Afghans would have seen as an improbable coincidence, that a beggar on the
street would happen to know my mother. Because we both knew that in
Afghanistan, and particularly in Kabul, such absurdity was commonplace. Baba
used to say, "Take two Afghans who've never met, put them in a room for ten
minutes, and they'll figure out how they're related."

We left the old man on the steps of that building. 1 meant to take him up
on his offer, come back and see if he'd unearthed any more stories about my
mother. But I never saw him again.

WE FOUND THE NEW ORPHANAGE in the northern part of Karteh-Seh, along the
banks of the dried-up Kabul River. It was a flat, barracks-style building with
splintered walls and windows boarded with planks of wood. Farid had told me
on the way there that Karteh-Seh had been one of the most war-ravaged
neighborhoods in Kabul, and, as we stepped out of the truck, the evidence was
overwhelming. The cratered streets were flanked by little more than ruins of
shelled buildings and abandoned homes. We passed the rusted skeleton of an
overturned car, a TV set with no screen half-buried in rubble, a wall with the
words ZENDA BAD TAL IRAN! (Long live the Taliban!) sprayed in black.

A short, thin, balding man with a shaggy gray beard opened the door. He
wore a ragged tweed jacket, a skullcap, and a pair of eyeglasses with one chipped
lens resting on the tip of his nose. Behind the glasses, tiny eyes like black peas
flitted from me to Farid. "Salaam alaykum," he said.

"Salaam alaykum," I said. I showed him the Polaroid. "We're searching for
this boy."

He gave the photo a cursory glance. "I am sorry. I have never seen him."

"You barely looked at the picture, my friend," Farid said. "Why not take a
closer look?"

"Lotfan," I added. Please.

The man behind the door took the picture. Studied it. Handed it back to
me. "Nay, sorry. I know just about every single child in this institution and that
one doesn't look familiar. Now, if you'll permit me, I have work to do." He closed
the door. Locked the bolt.

I rapped on the door with my knuckles. "Agha! Agha, please open the
door. We don't mean him any harm."

"I told you. He's not here/' his voice came from the other side. "Now,
please go away."

Farid stepped up to the door, rested his forehead on it. "Friend, we are not
with the Taliban," he said in a low, cautious voice. "The man who is with me
wants to take this boy to a safe place."

"I come from Peshawar," I said. "A good friend of mine knows an
American couple there who run a charity home for children." I felt the man's
presence on the other side of the door. Sensed him standing there, listening,
hesitating, caught between suspicion and hope. "Look, I knew Sohrab's father," I
said. "His name was Hassan. His mother's name was Farzana. He called his grand
mother Sasa. He knows how to read and write. And he's good with the slingshot.
There's hope for this boy, Agha, a way out. Please open the door."

From the other side, only silence.

"I'm his half uncle," I said.

A moment passed. Then a key rattled in the lock. The man's narrow face
reappeared in the crack. He looked from me to Farid and back. "You were wrong
about one thing."

"What?"

"He's great with the slingshot."

I smiled.

"He's inseparable from that thing. He tucks it in the waist of his pants
everywhere he goes."

THE MAN WHO LET US IN introduced himself as Zaman, the director of the
orphanage. "I'll take you to my office," he said.

We followed him through dim, grimy hallways where barefoot children
dressed in frayed sweaters ambled around. We walked past rooms with no floor
covering but matted carpets and windows shuttered with sheets of plastic.
Skeleton frames of steel beds, most with no mattress, filled the rooms.

"How many orphans live here?" Farid asked.

"More than we have room for. About two hundred and fifty," Zaman said
over his shoulder. "But they're not all yateem. Many of them have lost their
fathers in the war, and their mothers can't feed them because the Taliban don't
allow them to work. So they bring their children here." He made a sweeping
gesture with his hand and added ruefully, "This place is better than the street,
but not that much better. This building was never meant to be lived in--it used to
be a storage warehouse for a carpet manufacturer. So there's no water heater
and they've let the well go dry." He dropped his voice. "I've asked the Taliban for
money to dig a new well more times than I remember and they just twirl their
rosaries and tell me there is no money. No money." He snickered.

He pointed to a row of beds along the wall. "We don't have enough beds,
and not enough mattresses for the beds we do have. Worse, we don't have
enough blankets." He showed us a little girl skipping rope with two other kids.
"You see that girl? This past winter, the children had to share blankets. Her
brother died of exposure." He walked on. "The last time I checked, we have less
than a month's supply of rice left in the warehouse, and, when that runs out, the
children will have to eat bread and tea for breakfast and dinner." I noticed he
made no mention of lunch.

He stopped and turned to me. "There is very little shelter here, almost no
food, no clothes, no clean water. What I have in ample supply here is children
who've lost their childhood. But the tragedy is that these are the lucky ones.
We're filled beyond capacity and every day I turn away mothers who bring their
children." He took a step toward me. "You say there is hope for Sohrab? I pray
you don't lie, Agha. But... you may well be too late."

What do you mean?

Zaman's eyes shifted. "Follow me.

WHAT PASSED FOR THE DIRECTOR'S OFFICE was four bare, cracked walls, a
mat on the floor, a table, and two folding chairs. As Zaman and I sat down, I saw a
gray rat poke its head from a burrow in the wall and flit across the room. I
cringed when it sniffed at my shoes, then Zaman's, and scurried through the
open door.

"What did you mean it may be too late?" I said.

"Would you like some chai? I could make some."

"Nay, thank you. I'd rather we talk."

Zaman tilted back in his chair and crossed his arms on his chest. "What I
have to tell you is not pleasant. Not to mention that it may be very dangerous."

"For whom?"

"You. Me. And, of course, for Sohrab, if it's not too late already."

"I need to know," I said.

He nodded. "So you say. But first I want to ask you a question: How badly
do you want to find your nephew?"

I thought of the street fights we'd get into when we were kids, all the
times Hassan used to take them on for me, two against one, sometimes three
against one. I'd wince and watch, tempted to step in, but always stopping short,
always held back by something.

I looked at the hallway, saw a group of kids dancing in a circle. A little girl,
her left leg amputated below the knee, sat on a ratty mattress and watched,
smiling and clapping along with the other children. I saw Farid watching the
children too, his own mangled hand hanging at his side. I remembered Wahid's
boys and... I realized something: I would not leave Afghanistan without finding
Sohrab. "Tell me where he is," I said.

Zaman's gaze lingered on me. Then he nodded, picked up a pencil, and
twirled it between his fingers. "Keep my name out of it."

"I promise."

He tapped the table with the pencil. "Despite your promise, I think I'll live
to regret this, but perhaps it's just as well. I'm damned anyway. But if something
can be done for Sohrab... I'll tell you because I believe you. You have the look of a
desperate man." He was quiet for a long time. "There is a Talib official," he
muttered. "He visits once every month or two. He brings cash with him, not a lot,
but better than nothing at all." His shifty eyes fell on me, rolled away. "Usually
he'll take a girl. But not always."

"And you allow this?" Farid said behind me. He was going around the
table, closing in on Zaman.

"What choice do I have?" Zaman shot back. He pushed himself away from
the desk.

"You're the director here," Farid said. "Your job is watch over these
children."

"There's nothing I can do to stop it."

"You're selling children!" Farid barked.

"Farid, sit down! Let it go!" I said. But I was too late. Because suddenly
Farid was leaping over the table. Zaman's chair went flying as Farid fell on him
and pinned him to the floor. The director thrashed beneath Farid and made

muffled screaming sounds. His legs kicked a desk drawer free and sheets of
paper spilled to the floor.

I ran around the desk and saw why Zaman's screaming was muffled: Farid
was strangling him. I grasped Farid's shoulders with both hands and pulled hard.
He snatched away from me. "That's enough!" I barked. But Farid's face had
flushed red, his lips pulled back in a snarl. "I'm killing him! You can't stop me! I'm
killing him," he sneered.

"Get off him!"

"I'm killing him!" Something in his voice told me that if I didn't do
something quickly I'd witness my first murder.

"The children are watching, Farid. They're watching," I said. His shoulder
muscles tightened under my grip and, for a moment, I thought he'd keep
squeezing Zaman's neck anyway. Then he turned around, saw the children. They
were standing silently by the door, holding hands, some of them crying. I felt
Farid's muscles slacken. He dropped his hands, rose to his feet. He looked down
on Zaman and dropped a mouthful of spit on his face. Then he walked to the door
and closed it.

Zaman struggled to his feet, blotted his bloody lips with his sleeve, wiped
the spit off his cheek. Coughing and wheezing, he put on his skullcap, his glasses,
saw both lenses had cracked, and took them off. He buried his face in his hands.
None of us said anything for a long time.

"He took Sohrab a month ago," Zaman finally croaked, hands still
shielding his face.

"You call yourself a director?" Farid said.

Zaman dropped his hands. "I haven't been paid in over six months. I'm
broke because I've spent my life's savings on this orphanage. Everything I ever
owned or inherited I sold to run this godforsaken place. You think I don't have
family in Pakistan and Iran? I could have run like everyone else. But I didn't. I
stayed. I stayed because of them." He pointed to the door. "If I deny him one
child, he takes ten. So I let him take one and leave the judging to Allah. I swallow

my pride and take his goddamn filthy... dirty money. Then I go to the bazaar and
buy food for the children."

Farid dropped his eyes.

"What happens to the children he takes?" I asked.

Zaman rubbed his eyes with his forefinger and thumb. "Some times they
come back."

"Who is he? How do we find him?" I said.

"Go to Ghazi Stadium tomorrow. You'll see him at halftime. He'll be the
one wearing black sunglasses." He picked up his broken glasses and turned them
in his hands. "I want you to go now. The children are frightened."

He escorted us out.

As the truck pulled away, I saw Zaman in the side-view mirror, standing
in the doorway. A group of children surrounded him, clutching the hem of his
loose shirt. I saw he had put on his broken glasses.

TWENTY-ONE

We crossed the river and drove north through the crowded Pashtunistan Square.
Baba used to take me to Khyber Restaurant there for kabob. The building was

still standing, but its doors were padlocked, the windows shattered, and the
letters K and R missing from its name.

I saw a dead body near the restaurant. There had been a hanging. A young
man dangled from the end of a rope tied to a beam, his face puffy and blue, the
clothes he'd worn on the last day of his life shredded, bloody. Hardly anyone
seemed to notice him.

We rode silently through the square and headed toward the Wazir Akbar
Khan district. Everywhere I looked, a haze of dust covered the city and its sun-
dried brick buildings. A few blocks north of Pashtunistan Square, Farid pointed
to two men talking animatedly at a busy street corner. One of them was hobbling
on one leg, his other leg amputated below the knee. He cradled an artificial leg in
his arms. "You know what they're doing? Haggling over the leg."

"He's selling his leg?"

Farid nodded. "You can get good money for it on the black market. Feed
your kids for a couple of weeks."

To MY SURPRISE, most of the houses in the Wazir Akbar Khan district still
had roofs and standing walls. In fact, they were in pretty good shape. Trees still
peeked over the walls, and the streets weren't nearly as rubble-strewn as the
ones in Karteh-Seh. Faded streets signs, some twisted and bullet-pocked, still
pointed the way.

"This isn't so bad," I remarked.

"No surprise. Most of the important people live here now."

"Taliban?"

"Them too," Farid said.

Who else?

He drove us into a wide street with fairly clean sidewalks and walled
homes on either side. "The people behind the Taliban. The real brains of this
government, if you can call it that: Arabs, Chechens, Pakistanis," Farid said. He
pointed northwest. "Street 15, that way, is called Sarak-e-Mehmana." Street of
the Guests. "That's what they call them here, guests. I think someday these guests
are going to pee all over the carpet."

"I think that's it!" I said. "Over there!" I pointed to the landmark that used
to serve as a guide for me when I was a kid. If you ever get lost, Baba used to say,
remember that our street is the one with the pink house at the end of it. The pink
house with the steeply pitched roof had been the neighborhood's only house of
that color in the old days. It still was.

Farid turned onto the street. I saw Baba's house right away.

WE FIND THE LITTLE TURTLE behind tangles of sweetbrier in the yard. We
don't know how it got there and we're too excited to care. We paint its shell a
bright red, Hassan's idea, and a good one: This way, we'll never lose it in the
bushes. We pretend we're a pair of daredevil explorers who've discovered a
giant prehistoric monster in some distant jungle and we've brought it back for
the world to see. We set it down in the wooden wagon Ali built Hassan last
winter for his birthday, pretend it's a giant steel cage. Behold the fire-breathing
monstrosity! We march on the grass and pull the wagon behind us, around apple
and cherry trees, which become skyscrapers soaring into clouds, heads poking
out of thousands of windows to watch the spectacle passing below. We walk over
the little semi lunar bridge Baba has built near a cluster of fig trees; it becomes a
great suspension bridge joining cities, and the little pond below, a foamy sea.
Fireworks explode above the bridge's massive pylons and armed soldiers salute
us on both sides as gigantic steel cables shoot to the sky. The little turtle
bouncing around in the cab, we drag the wagon around the circular red brick
driveway outside the wrought iron gates and return the salutes of the world's
leaders as they stand and applaud. We are Hassan and Amir, famed adventurers
and the world's greatest explorers, about to receive a medal of honor for our
courageous feat...

GINGERLY, I WALKED up the driveway where tufts of weed now grew between
the sun-faded bricks. I stood outside the gates of my father's house, feeling like a
stranger. I set my hands on the rusty bars, remembering how I'd run through
these same gates thousands of times as a child, for things that mattered not at all
now and yet had seemed so important then. I peered in.

The driveway extension that led from the gates to the yard, where Hassan
and I took turns falling the summer we learned to ride a bike, didn't look as wide
or as long as I remembered it. The asphalt had split in a lightning-streak pattern,
and more tangles of weed sprouted through the fissures. Most of the poplar trees
had been chopped down-the trees Hassan and I used to climb to shine our
mirrors into the neighbors' homes. The ones still standing were nearly leafless.
The Wall of Ailing Corn was still there, though I saw no corn, ailing or otherwise,
along that wall now. The paint had begun to peel and sections of it had sloughed
off altogether. The lawn had turned the same brown as the haze of dust hovering
over the city, dotted by bald patches of dirt where nothing grew at all.

A jeep was parked in the driveway and that looked all wrong: Baba's black
Mustang belonged there. For years, the Mustang's eight cylinders roared to life
every morning, rousing me from sleep. I saw that oil had spilled under the jeep
and stained the driveway like a big Rorschach inkblot. Beyond the jeep, an empty
wheelbarrow lay on its side. I saw no sign of the rosebushes that Baba and Ali
had planted on the left side of the driveway, only dirt that spilled onto the
asphalt. And weeds.

Farid honked twice behind me. "We should go, Agha. We'll draw
attention," he called.

"Just give me one more minute," I said.

The house itself was far from the sprawling white mansion I remembered
from my childhood. It looked smaller. The roof sagged and the plaster was
cracked. The windows to the living room, the foyer, and the upstairs guest
bathroom were broken, patched haphazardly with sheets of clear plastic or
wooden boards nailed across the frames. The paint, once sparkling white, had
faded to ghostly gray and eroded in parts, revealing the layered bricks beneath.
The front steps had crumbled. Like so much else in Kabul, my father's house was
the picture of fallen splendor.

I found the window to my old bedroom, second floor, third window south
of the main steps to the house. I stood on tiptoes, saw nothing behind the

window but shadows. Twenty-five years earlier, I had stood behind that same
window, thick rain dripping down the panes and my breath fogging up the glass.
I had watched Hassan and Ali load their belongings into the trunk of my father's
car.

"Amir agha," Farid called again.

"I'm coming," I shot back.

Insanely, I wanted to go in. Wanted to walk up the front steps where Ali
used to make Hassan and me take off our snow boots. I wanted to step into the
foyer, smell the orange peel Ah always tossed into the stove to burn with
sawdust. Sit at the kitchen table, have tea with a slice of _naan_, listen to Hassan
sing old Hazara songs.

Another honk. I walked back to the Land Cruiser parked along the
sidewalk. Farid sat smoking behind the wheel.

"I have to look at one more thing," I told him.

"Can you hurry?"

"Give me ten minutes."

"Go, then." Then, just as I was turning to go: "Just forget it all. Makes it
easier."

"To what?"

"To go on," Farid said. He flicked his cigarette out of the window. "How
much more do you need to see? Let me save you the trouble: Nothing that you
remember has survived. Best to forget."

I don't want to forget anymore," I said. "Give me ten minutes.

WE HARDLY BROKE A SWEAT, Hassan and I, when we hiked up the hill just
north of Baba's house. We scampered about the hilltop chasing each other or sat
on a sloped ridge where there was a good view of the airport in the distance.
We'd watch airplanes take off and land. Go running again.

Now, by the time I reached the top of the craggy hill, each ragged breath
felt like inhaling fire. Sweat trickled down my face. I stood wheezing for a while,
a stitch in my side. Then I went looking for the abandoned cemetery. It didn't
take me long to find it. It was still there, and so was the old pomegranate tree.

I leaned against the gray stone gateway to the cemetery where Hassan
had buried his mother. The old metal gates hanging off the hinges were gone, and
the headstones were barely visible through the thick tangles of weeds that had
claimed the plot. A pair of crows sat on the low wall that enclosed the cemetery.

Hassan had said in his letter that the pomegranate tree hadn't borne fruit
in years. Looking at the wilted, leafless tree, I doubted it ever would again. I
stood under it, remembered all the times we'd climbed it, straddled its branches,
our legs swinging, dappled sunlight flickering through the leaves and casting on
our faces a mosaic of light and shadow. The tangy taste of pomegranate crept
into my mouth.

I hunkered down on my knees and brushed my hands against the trunk. I
found what I was looking for. The carving had dulled, almost faded altogether,
but it was still there: "Amir and Hassan. The Sultans of Kabul." I traced the curve
of each letter with my fingers. Picked small bits of bark from the tiny crevasses.

I sat cross-legged at the foot of the tree and looked south on the city of my
childhood. In those days, treetops poked behind the walls of every house. The
sky stretched wide and blue, and laundry drying on clotheslines glimmered in
the sun. If you listened hard, you might even have heard the call of the fruit seller
passing through Wazir Akbar Khan with his donkey: Cherries! Apricots! Grapes!
In the early evening, you would have heard azan, the mueszzin's** call to prayer
from the mosque in Shar-e-Nau.

I heard a honk and saw Farid waving at me. It was time to go.

WE DROVE SOUTH AGAIN, back toward Pashtunistan Square. We passed several
more red pickup trucks with armed, bearded young men crammed into the cabs.
Farid cursed under his breath every time we passed one.

I paid for a room at a small hotel near Pashtunistan Square. Three little
girls dressed in identical black dresses and white scarves clung to the slight,
bespectacled man behind the counter. He charged me $75, an unthinkable price
given the run-down appearance of the place, but I didn't mind. Exploitation to
finance a beach house in Hawaii was one thing. Doing it to feed your kids was
another.

There was no hot running water and the cracked toilet didn't flush. Just a
single steel-frame bed with a worn mattress, a ragged blanket, and a wooden
chair in the corner. The window overlooking the square had broken, hadn't been
replaced. As I lowered my suitcase, I noticed a dried bloodstain on the wall
behind the bed.

I gave Farid some money and he went out to get food. He returned with
four sizzling skewers of kabob, fresh _naan_, and a bowl of white rice. We sat on
the bed and all but devoured the food. There was one thing that hadn't changed
in Kabul after all: The kabob was as succulent and delicious as I remembered.

That night, I took the bed and Farid lay on the floor, wrapped himself with
an extra blanket for which the hotel owner charged me an additional fee. No light
came into the room except for the moonbeams streaming through the broken
window. Farid said the owner had told him that Kabul had been without
electricity for two days now and his generator needed fixing. We talked for a
while. He told me about growing up in Mazar-i-Sharif, in Jalalabad. He told me
about a time shortly after he and his father joined the jihad and fought the
Shorawi in the Panjsher Valley. They were stranded without food and ate locust
to survive. He told me of the day helicopter gunfire killed his father, of the day
the land mine took his two daughters. He asked me about America. I told him
that in America you could step into a grocery store and buy any of fifteen or
twenty different types of cereal. The lamb was always fresh and the milk cold,
the fruit plentiful and the water clear. Every home had a TV, and every TV a

remote, and you could get a satellite dish if you wanted. Receive over five
hundred channels.

"Five hundred?" Farid exclaimed.

"Five hundred."

We fell silent for a while. Just when I thought he had fallen asleep, Farid
chuckled. "Agha, did you hear what Mullah Nasrud din did when his daughter
came home and complained that her husband had beaten her?" I could feel him
smiling in the dark and a smile of my own formed on my face. There wasn't an
Afghan in the world who didn't know at least a few jokes about the bumbling
mullah.

"What?"

"He beat her too, then sent her back to tell the husband that Mullah was
no fool: If the bastard was going to beat his daughter, then Mullah would beat his
wife in return."

I laughed. Partly at the joke, partly at how Afghan humor never changed.
Wars were waged, the Internet was invented, and a robot had rolled on the
surface of Mars, and in Afghanistan we were still telling Mullah Nasruddin jokes.
"Did you hear about the time Mullah had placed a heavy bag on his shoulders and
was riding his donkey?" I said.

No.

"Someone on the street said why don't you put the bag on the donkey?
And he said, "That would be cruel, I'm heavy enough already for the poor thing."

We exchanged Mullah Nasruddin jokes until we ran out of them and we
fell silent again.

Amir agha?" Farid said, startling me from near sleep.

'Yes?

"Why are you here? I mean, why are you really here?"

"I told you."

"For the boy?"

"For the boy."

Farid shifted on the ground. "It's hard to believe."

"Sometimes I myself can hardly believe I'm here."

"No... What I mean to ask is why that boy? You come all the way from
America for... a Shi'a?"

That killed all the laughter in me. And the sleep. "I am tired," I said. "Let's
just get some sleep."

Farid's snoring soon echoed through the empty room. I stayed awake,
hands crossed on my chest, staring into the starlit night through the broken
window, and thinking that maybe what people said about Afghanistan was true.
Maybe it was a hopeless place.

A BUSTLING CROWD was filling Ghazi Stadium when we walked through the
entrance tunnels. Thousands of people milled about the tightly packed concrete
terraces. Children played in the aisles and chased each other up and down the
steps. The scent of garbanzo beans in spicy sauce hung in the air, mixed with the

smell of dung and sweat. Farid and I walked past street peddlers selling
cigarettes, pine nuts, and biscuits.

A scrawny boy in a tweed jacket grabbed my elbow and spoke into my
ear. Asked me if I wanted to buy some "sexy pictures."

"Very sexy, Agha," he said, his alert eyes darting side to side-reminding
me of a girl who, a few years earlier, had tried to sell me crack in the Tenderloin
district in San Francisco. The kid peeled one side of his jacket open and gave me
a fleeting glance of his sexy pictures: postcards of Hindi movies showing doe¬
eyed sultry actresses, fully dressed, in the arms of their leading men. "So sexy,"
he repeated.

"Nay, thanks," I said, pushing past him.

"He gets caught, they'll give him a flogging that will waken his father in
the grave," Farid muttered.

There was no assigned seating, of course. No one to show us politely to
our section, aisle, row, and seat. There never had been, even in the old days of
the monarchy. We found a decent spot to sit, just left of midfield, though it took
some shoving and elbowing on Farid's part.

I remembered how green the playing field grass had been in the 70s
when Baba used to bring me to soccer games here. Now the pitch was a mess.
There were holes and craters everywhere, most notably a pair of deep holes in
the ground behind the south end goalposts. And there was no grass at all, just
dirt. When the two teams finally took the field-all wearing long pants despite the
heat-and play began, it became difficult to follow the ball in the clouds of dust
kicked up by the players. Young, whip-toting Talibs roamed the aisles, striking
anyone who cheered too loudly.

They brought them out shortly after the halftime whistle blew. A pair of
dusty red pickup trucks, like the ones I'd seen around town since I'd arrived,
rode into the stadium through the gates. The crowd rose to its feet. A woman
dressed in a green burqa sat in the cab of one truck, a blindfolded man in the
other. The trucks drove around the track, slowly, as if to let the crowd get a long
look. It had the desired effect: People craned their necks, pointed, stood on

tiptoes. Next to me, Farid's Adam's apple bobbed up and down as he mumbled a
prayer under his breath.

The red trucks entered the playing field, rode toward one end in twin
clouds of dust, sunlight reflecting off their hubcaps. A third truck met them at the
end of the field. This one's cab was filled with something and I suddenly
understood the purpose of those two holes behind the goalposts. They unloaded
the third truck. The crowd murmured in anticipation.

"Do you want to stay?" Farid said gravely.

"No," I said. I had never in my life wanted to be away from a place as badly
as I did now. "But we have to stay."

Two Talibs with Kalashnikovs slung across their shoulders helped the
blindfolded man from the first truck and two others helped the burqa-clad
woman. The woman's knees buckled under her and she slumped to the ground.
The soldiers pulled her up and she slumped again. When they tried to lift her
again, she screamed and kicked. I will never, as long as I draw breath, forget the
sound of that scream. It was the cry of a wild animal trying to pry its mangled leg
free from the bear trap. Two more Talibs joined in and helped force her into one
of the chest-deep holes. The blindfolded man, on the other hand, quietly allowed
them to lower him into the hole dug for him. Now only the accused pair's torsos
protruded from the ground.

A chubby, white-bearded cleric dressed in gray garments stood near the
goalposts and cleared his throat into a handheld microphone. Behind him the
woman in the hole was still screaming. He recited a lengthy prayer from the
Koran, his nasal voice undulating through the sudden hush of the stadium's
crowd. I remembered something Baba had said to me a long time ago: Piss on the
beards of all those self-righteous monkeys. They do nothing but thumb their
rosaries and recite a book written in a tongue they don't even understand. God
help us all if Afghanistan ever falls into their hands.

When the prayer was done, the cleric cleared his throat. "Brothers and
sisters!" he called, speaking in Farsi, his voice booming through the stadium. "We
are here today to carry out Shari'a. We are here today to carry out justice. We are
here today because the will of Allah and the word of the Prophet Muhammad,
peace be upon him, are alive and well here in Afghanistan, our beloved
homeland. We listen to what God says and we obey because we are nothing but
humble, powerless creatures before God's greatness. And what does God say? I

ask you! WHAT DOES GOD SAY? God says that every sinner must be punished in
a manner befitting his sin. Those are not my words, nor the words of my
brothers. Those are the words of GOD!" He pointed with his free hand to the sky.
My head was pounding and the sun felt much too hot.

"Every sinner must be punished in a manner befitting his sin!" the cleric
repeated into the mike, lowering his voice, enunciating each word slowly,
dramatically. "And what manner of punishment, brothers and sisters, befits the
adulterer? How shall we punish those who dishonor the sanctity of marriage?
How shall we deal with those who spit in the face of God? How shall we answer
those who throw stones at the windows of God's house? WE SHALL THROW THE
STONES BACK!"

He shut off the microphone. A low-pitched murmur spread through the

crowd.

Next to me, Farid was shaking his head. "And they call themselves
Muslims," he whispered.

Then a tall, broad-shouldered man stepped out of the pickup truck. The
sight of him drew cheers from a few spectators. This time, no one was struck
with a whip for cheering too loudly. The tall man's sparkling white garment
glimmered in the afternoon sun. The hem of his loose shirt fluttered in the
breeze, his arms spread like those of Jesus on the cross. He greeted the crowd by
turning slowly in a full circle. When he faced our section, I saw he was wearing
dark round sunglasses like the ones John Lennon wore.

"That must be our man," Farid said.

The tall Talib with the black sunglasses walked to the pile of stones they
had unloaded from the third truck. He picked up a rock and showed it to the
crowd. The noise fell, replaced by a buzzing sound that rippled through the
stadium. I looked around me and saw that everyone was tsk'ing. The Talib,
looking absurdly like a baseball pitcher on the mound, hurled the stone at the
blindfolded man in the hole. It struck the side of his head. The woman screamed
again. The crowd made a startled "OH!" sound. I closed my eyes and covered my
face with my hands. The spectators' "OH!" rhymed with each flinging of the
stone, and that went on for a while. When they stopped, I asked Farid if it was
over. He said no. I guessed the people's throats had tired. I don't know how much
longer I sat with my face in my hands. I know that I reopened my eyes when 1
heard people around me asking, "Mord? Mord? Is he dead?"

The man in the hole was now a mangled mess of blood and shredded rags.
His head slumped forward, chin on chest. The Talib in the John Lennon
sunglasses was looking down at another man squatting next to the hole, tossing a
rock up and down in his hand. The squatting man had one end of a stethoscope
to his ears and the other pressed on the chest of the man in the hole. He removed
the stethoscope from his ears and shook his head no at the Talib in the
sunglasses. The crowd moaned.

John Lennon walked back to the mound.

When it was all over, when the bloodied corpses had been
unceremoniously tossed into the backs of red pickup trucks--separate ones--a
few men with shovels hurriedly filled the holes. One of them made a passing
attempt at covering up the large blood stains by kicking dirt over them. A few
minutes later, the teams took the field. Second half was under way.

Our meeting was arranged for three o'clock that afternoon. The swiftness
with which the appointment was set surprised me. I'd expected delays, a round
of questioning at least, perhaps a check of our papers. But I was reminded of how
unofficial even official matters still were in Afghanistan: all Farid had to do was
tell one of the whip-carrying Talibs that we had personal business to discuss
with the man in white. Farid and he exchanged words. The guy with the whip
then nodded and shouted something in Pashtu to a young man on the field, who
ran to the south-end goalposts where the Talib in the sunglasses was chatting
with the plump cleric who'd given the sermon. The three spoke. I saw the guy in
the sunglasses look up. He nodded. Said something in the messenger's ear. The
young man relayed the message back to us.

It was set, then. Three o'clock.

TWENTY-TWO

Farid eased the Land Cruiser up the driveway of a big house in Wazir Akbar
Khan. He parked in the shadows of willow trees that spilled over the walls of the
compound located on Street 15, Sarak-e-Mehmana, Street of the Guests. He killed
the engine and we sat for a minute, listening to the tink-tink of the engine cooling
off, neither one of us saying anything. Farid shifted on his seat and toyed with the
keys still hanging from the ignition switch. I could tell he was readying himself to
tell me something.

"I guess I'll wait in the car for you," he said finally, his tone a little
apologetic. He wouldn't look at me. "This is your business now. I--"

I patted his arm. "You've done much more than I've paid you for. I don't
expect you to go with me." But I wished I didn't have to go in alone. Despite what
I had learned about Baba, I wished he were standing alongside me now. Baba
would have busted through the front doors and demanded to be taken to the
man in charge, piss on the beard of anyone who stood in his way. But Baba was
long dead, buried in the Afghan section of a little cemetery in Hayward. Just last
month, Soraya and I had placed a bouquet of daisies and freesias beside his
headstone. I was on my own.

I stepped out of the car and walked to the tall, wooden front gates of the
house. I rang the bell but no buzz came--still no electricity--and I had to pound
on the doors. A moment later, I heard terse voices from the other side and a pair
of men toting Kalashnikovs answered the door.

I glanced at Farid sitting in the car and mouthed, I'll be back, not so sure
at all that I would be.

The armed men frisked me head to toe, patted my legs, felt my crotch. One
of them said something in Pashtu and they both chuckled. We stepped through
the front gates. The two guards escorted me across a well-manicured lawn, past
a row of geraniums and stubby bushes lined along the wall. An old hand-pump
water well stood at the far end of the yard. I remembered how Kaka Homayoun's
house in Jalalabad had had a water well like that-the twins, Fazila and Karima,
and I used to drop pebbles in it, listen for the plink.

We climbed a few steps and entered a large, sparsely decorated house. We
crossed the foyer--a large Afghan flag draped one of the walls--and the men took
me upstairs to a room with twin mint green sofas and a big-screen TV in the far
corner. A prayer rug showing a slightly oblong Mecca was nailed to one of the
walls. The older of the two men motioned toward the sofa with the barrel of his
weapon. I sat down. They left the room.

I crossed my legs. Uncrossed them. Sat with my sweaty hands on my
knees. Did that make me look nervous? I clasped them together, decided that was
worse and just crossed my arms on my chest. Blood thudded in my temples. I felt
utterly alone. Thoughts were flying around in my head, but I didn't want to think
at all, because a sober part of me knew that what I had managed to get myself
into was insanity. I was thousands of miles from my wife, sitting in a room that
felt like a holding cell, waiting for a man I had seen murder two people that same
day. It was insanity. Worse yet, it was irresponsible. There was a very realistic
chance that I was going to render Soraya a biwa, a widow, at the age of thirty-six.
This isn't you, Amir, part of me said. You're gutless. It's how you were made. And
that's not such a bad thing because your saving grace is that you've never lied to
yourself about it. Not about that. Nothing wrong with cowardice as long as it
comes with prudence. But when a coward stops remembering who he is... God
help him.

There was a coffee table by the sofa. The base was X-shaped, walnut-sized
brass balls studding the ring where the metallic legs crossed. I'd seen a table like
that before. Where? And then it came to me: at the crowded tea shop in
Peshawar, that night I'd gone for a walk. On the table sat a bowl of red grapes. I
plucked one and tossed it in my mouth. I had to preoccupy myself with
something, anything, to silence the voice in my head. The grape was sweet. I
popped another one in, unaware that it would be the last bit of solid food I would
eat for a long time.

The door opened and the two armed men returned, between them the tall
Talib in white, still wearing his dark John Lennon glasses, looking like some
broad-shouldered, NewAge mystic guru.

He took a seat across from me and lowered his hands on the armrests. For
a long time, he said nothing. Just sat there, watching me, one hand drumming the
upholstery, the other twirling turquoise blue prayer beads. He wore a black vest
over the white shirt now, and a gold watch. I saw a splotch of dried blood on his
left sleeve. I found it morbidly fascinating that he hadn't changed clothes after
the executions earlier that day.

Periodically, his free hand floated up and his thick fingers batted at
something in the air. They made slow stroking motions, up and down, side to
side, as if he were caressing an invisible pet. One of his sleeves retracted and I
saw marks on his forearm--Td seen those same tracks on homeless people living
in grimy alleys in San Francisco.

His skin was much paler than the other two men's, almost sallow, and a
crop of tiny sweat beads gleamed on his forehead just below the edge of his black
turban. His beard, chest-length like the others, was lighter in color too.

"Salaam alaykum," he said.

"Salaam."

"You can do away with that now, you know," he said.

"Pardon?"

He turned his palm to one of the armed men and motioned. Rrrriiiip.
Suddenly my cheeks were stinging and the guard was tossing my beard up and
down in his hand, giggling. The Talib grinned. "One of the better ones I've seen in
a while. But it really is so much better this way, I think. Don't you?" He twirled
his fingers, snapped them, fist opening and closing. "So, _Inshallah_, you enjoyed
the show today?"

"Was that what it was?" I said, rubbing my cheeks, hoping my voice didn't
betray the explosion of terror I felt inside.

"Public justice is the greatest kind of show, my brother. Drama. Suspense.
And, best of all, education en masse." He snapped his fingers. The younger of the
two guards lit him a cigarette. The Talib laughed. Mumbled to himself. His hands
were shaking and he almost dropped the cigarette. "But you want a real show,
you should have been with me in Mazar. August 1998, that was."

"I'm sorry?"

We left them out for the dogs, you know.

I saw what he was getting at.

He stood up, paced around the sofa once, twice. Sat down again. He spoke
rapidly. "Door to door we went, calling for the men and the boys. We'd shoot
them right there in front of their families. Let them see. Let them remember who
they were, where they belonged." He was almost panting now. "Sometimes, we
broke down their doors and went inside their homes. And... I'd... I'd sweep the
barrel of my machine gun around the room and fire and fire until the smoke
blinded me." He leaned toward me, like a man about to share a great secret. "You
don't know the meaning of the word 'liberating' until you've done that, stood in a
roomful of targets, let the bullets fly, free of guilt and remorse, knowing you are
virtuous, good, and decent. Knowing you're doing God's work. It's breathtaking."
He kissed the prayer beads, tilted his head. "You remember that, Javid?"

"Yes, Agha sahib," the younger of the guards replied. "How could I forget?"

I had read about the Hazara massacre in Mazar-i-Sharif in the papers. It
had happened just after the Taliban took over Mazar, one of the last cities to fall.
I remembered Soraya handing me the article over breakfast, her face bloodless.

"Door-to-door. We only rested for food and prayer," the Talib said. He
said it fondly, like a man telling of a great party he'd attended. "We left the bodies
in the streets, and if their families tried to sneak out to drag them back into their
homes, we'd shoot them too. We left them in the streets for days. We left them
for the dogs. Dog meat for dogs." He crushed his cigarette. Rubbed his eyes with
tremulous hands. "You come from America?"

'Yes.

"How is that whore these days?"

I had a sudden urge to urinate. I prayed it would pass. "I'm looking for a

boy.

"Isn't everyone?" he said. The men with the Kalashnikovs laughed. Their
teeth were stained green with naswar.

"I understand he is here, with you," I said. "His name is Sohrab."

"I'll ask you something: What are you doing with that whore? Why aren't
you here, with your Muslim brothers, serving your country?"

"I've been away a long time," was all I could think of saying. My head felt
so hot. I pressed my knees together, held my bladder.

The Talib turned to the two men standing by the door. "That's an
answer?" he asked them.

"Nay, Agha sahib," they said in unison, smiling.

He turned his eyes to me. Shrugged. "Not an answer, they say." He took a
drag of his cigarette. "There are those in my circle who believe that abandoning
watan when it needs you the most is the same as treason. I could have you
arrested for treason, have you shot for it even. Does that frighten you?"

"I'm only here for the boy."

"Does that frighten you?"

"Yes."

"It should," he said. He leaned back in the sofa. Crushed the cigarette.

I thought about Soraya. It calmed me. I thought of her sickle-shaped
birthmark, the elegant curve of her neck, her luminous eyes. I thought of our
wedding night, gazing at each other's reflection in the mirror under the green
veil, and how her cheeks blushed when I whispered that I loved her. I

remembered the two of us dancing to an old Afghan song, round and round,
everyone watching and clapping, the world a blur of flowers, dresses, tuxedos,
and smiling faces.

The Talib was saying something.

"Pardon?"

"I said would you like to see him? Would you like to see my boy?" His
upper lip curled up in a sneer when he said those last two words.

'Yes.

The guard left the room. I heard the creak of a door swinging open. Heard
the guard say something in Pashtu, in a hard voice. Then, footfalls, and the jingle
of bells with each step. It reminded me of the Monkey Man Hassan and 1 used to
chase down in Shar e-Nau. We used to pay him a rupia of our allowance for a
dance. The bell around his monkey's neck had made that same jingling sound.

Then the door opened and the guard walked in. He carried a stereo--a
boom box--on his shoulder. Behind him, a boy dressed in a loose, sapphire blue
pirhan-tumban followed.

The resemblance was breathtaking. Disorienting. Rahim Khan's Polaroid
hadn't done justice to it.

The boy had his father's round moon face, his pointy stub of a chin, his
twisted, seashell ears, and the same slight frame. It was the Chinese doll face of
my childhood, the face peering above fanned-out playing cards all those winter
days, the face behind the mosquito net when we slept on the roof of my father's
house in the summer. His head was shaved, his eyes darkened with mascara, and
his cheeks glowed with an unnatural red. When he stopped in the middle of the
room, the bells strapped around his anklets stopped jingling. His eyes fell on me.
Lingered. Then he looked away. Looked down at his naked feet.

One of the guards pressed a button and Pashtu music filled the room.
Tabla, harmonium, the whine of a dil-roba. I guessed music wasn't sinful as long
as it played to Taliban ears. The three men began to clap.

"Wah wah! _Mashallah_!" they cheered.

Sohrab raised his arms and turned slowly. He stood on tiptoes, spun
gracefully, dipped to his knees, straightened, and spun again. His little hands
swiveled at the wrists, his fingers snapped, and his head swung side to side like a
pendulum. His feet pounded the floor, the bells jingling in perfect harmony with
the beat of the tabla. He kept his eyes closed.

"_Mashallah_!" they cheered. "Shahbas! Bravo!" The two guards whistled
and laughed. The Talib in white was tilting his head back and forth with the
music, his mouth half-open in a leer.

Sohrab danced in a circle, eyes closed, danced until the music stopped.
The bells jingled one final time when he stomped his foot with the song's last
note. He froze in midspin.

"Bia, bia, my boy," the Talib said, calling Sohrab to him. Sohrab went to
him, head down, stood between his thighs. The Talib wrapped his arms around
the boy. "How talented he is, nay, my Hazara boy!" he said. His hands slid down
the child's back, then up, felt under his armpits. One of the guards elbowed the
other and snickered. The Talib told them to leave us alone.

"Yes, Agha sahib," they said as they exited.

The Talib spun the boy around so he faced me. He locked his arms around
Sohrab's belly, rested his chin on the boy's shoulder. Sohrab looked down at his
feet, but kept stealing shy, furtive glances at me. The man's hand slid up and
down the boy's belly. Up and down, slowly, gently.

"I've been wondering," the Talib said, his bloodshot eyes peering at me
over Sohrab's shoulder. "Whatever happened to old Babalu, anyway?"

The question hit me like a hammer between the eyes. I felt the color drain
from my face. My legs went cold. Numb.

He laughed. "What did you think? That you'd put on a fake beard and I
wouldn't recognize you? Here's something I'll bet you never knew about me: I
never forget a face. Not ever." He brushed his lips against Sohrab's ear, kept his
eye on me. "I heard your father died. Tsk-tsk. I always did want to take him on.
Looks like I'll have to settle for his weakling of a son." Then he took off his
sunglasses and locked his bloodshot blue eyes on mine.

I tried to take a breath and couldn't. I tried to blink and couldn't. The
moment felt surreal--no, not surreal, absurd--it had knocked the breath out of
me, brought the world around me to a standstill. My face was burning. What was
the old saying about the bad penny? My past was like that, always turning up. His
name rose from the deep and I didn't want to say it, as if uttering it might conjure
him. But he was already here, in the flesh, sitting less than ten feet from me, after
all these years. His name escaped my lips: "Assef."

"Amir jan."

"What are you doing here?" I said, knowing how utterly foolish the
question sounded, yet unable to think of anything else to say.

"Me?" Assef arched an eyebrow "I'm in my element. The question is what
are you doing here?"

"I already told you," I said. My voice was trembling. I wished it wouldn't
do that, wished my flesh wasn't shrinking against my bones.

"The boy?"

'Yes.

Why?

"I'll pay you for him," 1 said. "I can have money wired.

"Money?" Assef said. He tittered. "Have you ever heard of Rockingham?
Western Australia, a slice of heaven. You should see it, miles and miles of beach.
Green water, blue skies. My parents live there, in a beachfront villa. There's a golf
course behind the villa and a little lake. Father plays golf every day. Mother, she
prefers tennis--Father says she has a wicked backhand. They own an Afghan
restaurant and two jewelry stores; both businesses are doing spectacularly." He
plucked a red grape. Put it, lovingly, in Sohrab's mouth. "So if I need money, I'll
have them wire it to me." He kissed the side of Sohrab's neck. The boy flinched a
little, closed his eyes again. "Besides, I didn't fight the Shorawi for money. Didn't
join the Taliban for money either. Do you want to know why I joined them?"

My lips had gone dry. I licked them and found my tongue had dried too.

"Are you thirsty?" Assef said, smirking.

"I think you're thirsty."

"I'm fine," I said. The truth was, the room felt too hot suddenly--sweat was
bursting from my pores, prickling my skin. And was this really happening? Was I
really sitting across from Assef? "As you wish," he said. "Anyway, where was I?

Oh yes, how I joined the Taliban. Well, as you may remember, I wasn't much of a
religious type. But one day I had an epiphany. I had it in jail. Do you want to
hear?"

I said nothing.

"Good. I'll tell you," he said. "I spent some time in jail, at Poleh-Charkhi**,
just after Babrak Karmal took over in 1980.1 ended up there one night, when a
group of Parchami soldiers marched into our house and ordered my father and
me at gun point to follow them. The bastards didn't give a reason, and they
wouldn't answer my mother's questions. Not that it was a mystery; everyone
knew the communists had no class. They came from poor families with no name.
The same dogs who weren't fit to lick my shoes before the Shorawi came were
now ordering me at gunpoint, Parchami flag on their lapels, making their little
point about the fall of the bourgeoisie and acting like they were the ones with
class. It was happening all over: Round up the rich, throw them in jail, make an
example for the comrades.

"Anyway, we were crammed in groups of six in these tiny cells each the
size of a refrigerator. Every night the commandant, a half-Hazara, half-Uzbek
thing who smelled like a rotting donkey, would have one of the prisoners
dragged out of the cell and he'd beat him until sweat poured from his fat face.
Then he'd light a cigarette, crack his joints, and leave. The next night, he'd pick
someone else. One night, he picked me. It couldn't have come at a worse time. I'd
been peeing blood for three days. Kidney stones. And if you've never had one,
believe me when I say it's the worst imaginable pain. My mother used to get
them too, and I remember she told me once she'd rather give birth than pass a
kidney stone. Anyway, what could I do? They dragged me out and he started
kicking me. He had knee-high boots with steel toes that he wore every night for
his little kicking game, and he used them on me. I was screaming and screaming
and he kept kicking me and then, suddenly, he kicked me on the left kidney and
the stone passed. Just like that! Oh, the relief!" Assef laughed. "And I yelled 'Allah-
u akbar' and he kicked me even harder and I started laughing. He got mad and hit
me harder, and the harder he kicked me, the harder I laughed. They threw me
back in the cell laughing. I kept laughing and laughing because suddenly I knew
that had been a message from God: He was on my side. He wanted me to live for
a reason.

"You know, I ran into that commandant on the battlefield a few years
later-funny how God works. 1 found him in a trench just outside Meymanah,
bleeding from a piece of shrapnel in his chest. He was still wearing those same
boots. I asked him if he remembered me. He said no. I told him the same thing I
just told you, that I never forget a face. Then I shot him in the balls. I've been on a
mission since."

"What mission is that?" I heard myself say. "Stoning adulterers? Raping
children? Flogging women for wearing high heels? Massacring Hazaras? All in
the name of Islam?" The words spilled suddenly and unexpectedly, came out
before I could yank the leash. I wished I could take them back. Swallow them. But
they were out. I had crossed a line, and whatever little hope I had of getting out
alive had vanished with those words.

A look of surprise passed across Assef's face, briefly, and disappeared. "I
see this may turn out to be enjoyable after all," he said, snickering. "But there are
things traitors like you don't understand."

Like what?

Assef's brow twitched. "Like pride in your people, your customs, your
language. Afghanistan is like a beautiful mansion littered with garbage, and
someone has to take out the garbage."

"That's what you were doing in Mazar, going door-to-door? Taking out the
garbage?"

"Precisely."

"In the west, they have an expression for that," I said. "They call it ethnic
cleansing."

"Do they?" Assef's face brightened. "Ethnic cleansing. I like it. I like the
sound of it."

"All I want is the boy."

"Ethnic cleansing," Assef murmured, tasting the words.

"I want the boy," I said again. Sohrab's eyes flicked to me. They were
slaughter sheep's eyes. They even had the mascara-1 remembered how, on the
day of Eid of Qorban, the mullah in our backyard used to apply mascara to the
eyes of the sheep and feed it a cube of sugar before slicing its throat. I thought I
saw pleading in Sohrab's eyes.

"Tell me why," Assef said. He pinched Sohrab's earlobe between his teeth.
Let go. Sweat beads rolled down his brow.

"That's my business."

him.

What do you want to do with him?" he said. Then a coy smile. "Or to

That's disgusting," I said.

"How would you know? Have you tried it?"

"I want to take him to a better place."

"Tell me why."

"That's my business," I said. I didn't know what had emboldened me to be
so curt, maybe the fact that I thought I was going to die anyway.

"1 wonder," Assef said. "I wonder why you've come all this way, Amir,
come all this way for a Hazara? Why are you here? Why are you really here?"

"I have my reasons," I said.

"Very well then," Assef said, sneering. He shoved Sohrab in the back,
pushed him right into the table. Sohrab's hips struck the table, knocking it upside
down and spilling the grapes. He fell on them, face first, and stained his shirt
purple with grape juice. The table's legs, crossing through the ring of brass balls,
were now pointing to the ceiling.

"Take him, then," Assef said. I helped Sohrab to his feet, swatted the bits
of crushed grape that had stuck to his pants like barnacles to a pier.

"Go, take him," Assef said, pointing to the door.

I took Sohrab's hand. It was small, the skin dry and calloused. His fingers
moved, laced themselves with mine. I saw Sohrab in that Polaroid again, the way
his arm was wrapped around Hassan's leg, his head resting against his father's
hip. They'd both been smiling. The bells jingled as we crossed the room.

We made it as far as the door.

free.

Of course/' Assef said behind us, "I didn't say you could take him for

I turned. "What do you want?"

"You have to earn him."

"What do you want?"

"We have some unfinished business, you and I," Assef said. "You
remember, don't you?"

He needn't have worried. I would never forget the day after Daoud Khan
overthrew the king. My entire adult life, whenever I heard Daoud Khan's name,
what I saw was Hassan with his sling shot pointed at Assef s face, Hassan saying
that they'd have to start calling him One-Eyed Assef, instead of Assef Goshkhor. I
remember how envious I'd been of Hassan's bravery. Assef had backed down,
promised that in the end he'd get us both. He'd kept that promise with Hassan.
Now it was my turn.

"All right," I said, not knowing what else there was to say. I wasn't about
to beg; that would have only sweetened the moment for him.

Assef called the guards back into the room. "I want you to listen to me," he
said to them. "In a moment, I'm going to close the door. Then he and I are going
to finish an old bit of business. No matter what you hear, don't come in! Do you
hear me? Don't come in.

The guards nodded. Looked from Assef to me. "Yes, Agha sahib."

"When it's all done, only one of us will walk out of this room alive," Assef
said. "If it's him, then he's earned his freedom and you let him pass, do you
understand?"

The older guard shifted on his feet. "But Agha sahib-

"If it's him, you let him pass!" Assef screamed. The two men flinched but
nodded again. They turned to go. One of them reached for Sohrab.

"Let him stay," Assef said. He grinned. "Let him watch. Lessons are good
things for boys."

The guards left. Assef put down his prayer beads. Reached in the breast
pocket of his black vest. What he fished out of that pocket didn't surprise me one
bit: stainless-steel brass knuckles.

HE HAS GEL IN HIS HAIR and a Clark Gable mustache above his thick lips. The gel
has soaked through the green paper surgical cap, made a dark stain the shape of
Africa. I remember that about him. That, and the gold Allah chain around his dark
neck. He is peering down at me, speaking rapidly in a language I don't
understand, Urdu, I think. My eyes keep going to his Adam's apple bobbing up
and down, up and down, and I want to ask him how old he is anyway-he looks
far too young, like an actor from some foreign soap opera-but all I can mutter is,

I think I gave him a good fight. I think I gave him a good fight.

I DON'T KNOW if I gave Assef a good fight. I don't think I did. How could I have?
That was the first time I'd fought anyone. I had never so much as thrown a punch
in my entire life.

My memory of the fight with Assef is amazingly vivid in stretches: I
remember Assef turning on the music before slipping on his brass knuckles. The
prayer rug, the one with the oblong, woven Mecca, came loose from the wall at
one point and landed on my head; the dust from it made me sneeze. I remember
Assef shoving grapes in my face, his snarl all spit-shining teeth, his bloodshot
eyes rolling. His turban fell at some point, let loose curls of shoulder-length blond
hair.

And the end, of course. That, I still see with perfect clarity. I always will.

Mostly, I remember this: His brass knuckles flashing in the afternoon
light; how cold they felt with the first few blows and how quickly they warmed
with my blood. Getting thrown against the wall, a nail where a framed picture
may have hung once jabbing at my back. Sohrab screaming. Tabla, harmonium, a
dil-roba. Getting hurled against the wall. The knuckles shattering my jaw.

Choking on my own teeth, swallowing them, thinking about all the countless
hours I'd spent flossing and brushing. Getting hurled against the wall. Lying on
the floor, blood from my split upper lip staining the mauve carpet, pain ripping
through my belly, and wondering when I'd be able to breathe again. The sound of
my ribs snapping like the tree branches Hassan and I used to break to sword
fight like Sinbad in those old movies. Sohrab screaming. The side of my face
slamming against the corner of the television stand. That snapping sound again,
this time just under my left eye. Music. Sohrab screaming. Fingers grasping my
hair, pulling my head back, the twinkle of stainless steel. Here they come. That
snapping sound yet again, now my nose. Biting down in pain, noticing how my
teeth didn't align like they used to. Getting kicked. Sohrab screaming.

I don't know at what point I started laughing, but I did. It hurt to laugh,
hurt my jaws, my ribs, my throat. But I was laughing and laughing. And the
harder I laughed, the harder he kicked me, punched me, scratched me.

"WHAT'S SO FUNNY?" Assef kept roaring with each blow. His spittle
landed in my eye. Sohrab screamed.

"WHAT'S SO FUNNY?" Assef bellowed. Another rib snapped, this time left
lower. What was so funny was that, for the first time since the winter of 1975,1
felt at peace. I laughed because I saw that, in some hidden nook in a corner of my
mind, I'd even been looking forward to this. I remembered the day on the hill I
had pelted Hassan with pomegranates and tried to provoke him. He'd just stood
there, doing nothing, red juice soaking through his shirt like blood. Then he'd
taken the pomegranate from my hand, crushed it against his forehead. Are you
satisfied now? he'd hissed. Do you feel better? I hadn't been happy and I hadn't
felt better, not at all. But I did now. My body was broken--just how badly I
wouldn't find out until later--but I felt healed. Healed at last. I laughed.

Then the end. That, I'll take to my grave: I was on the ground laughing,
Assef straddling my chest, his face a mask of lunacy, framed by snarls of his hair
swaying inches from my face. His free hand was locked around my throat. The
other, the one with the brass knuckles, cocked above his shoulder. He raised his
fist higher, raised it for another blow.

Then: "Bas." A thin voice.

We both looked.

"Please, no more."

I remembered something the orphanage director had said when he'd
opened the door to me and Farid. What had been his name? Zaman? He's
inseparable from that thing, he had said. He tucks it in the waist of his pants
everywhere he goes.

"No more."

Twin trails of black mascara, mixed with tears, had rolled down his
cheeks, smeared the rouge. His lower lip trembled. Mucus seeped from his nose.
"Bas," he croaked.

His hand was cocked above his shoulder, holding the cup of the slingshot
at the end of the elastic band which was pulled all the way back. There was
something in the cup, something shiny and yellow. I blinked the blood from my
eyes and saw it was one of the brass balls from the ring in the table base. Sohrab
had the slingshot pointed to Assef's face.

"No more, Agha. Please," he said, his voice husky and trembling. "Stop
hurting him."

Assef's mouth moved wordlessly. He began to say something, stopped.
"What do you think you're you doing?" he finally said.

"Please stop," Sohrab said, fresh tears pooling in his green eyes, mixing
with mascara.

"Put it down, Hazara," Assef hissed. "Put it down or what I'm doing to him
will be a gentle ear twisting compared to what I'll do to you."

The tears broke free. Sohrab shook his head. "Please, Agha," he said.

"Stop."

"Put it down."

"Don't hurt him anymore."

"Put it down."

"Please."

"PUT IT DOWN!"

"PUT IT DOWN!" Assef let go of my throat. Lunged at Sohrab.

The slingshot made a thwiiiiit sound when Sohrab released the cup. Then
Assef was screaming. He put his hand where his left eye had been just a moment
ago. Blood oozed between his fingers. Blood and something else, something
white and gel-like. That's called vitreous fluid, I thought with clarity. I've read
that somewhere. Vitreous fluid.

Assef rolled on the carpet. Rolled side to side, shrieking, his hand still
cupped over the bloody socket.

"Let's go!" Sohrab said. He took my hand. Helped me to my feet. Every
inch of my battered body wailed with pain. Behind us, Assef kept shrieking.

OUT! GET IT OUT!" he screamed.

Teetering, I opened the door. The guards' eyes widened when they saw
me and I wondered what I looked like. My stomach hurt with each breath. One of
the guards said something in Pashtu and then they blew past us, running into the
room where Assef was still screaming. "OUT!"

"Bia," Sohrab said, pulling my hand. "Let's go!"

I stumbled down the hallway, Sohrab's little hand in mine. I took a final
look over my shoulder. The guards were huddled over Assef, doing something to
his face. Then I understood: The brass ball was still stuck in his empty eye socket.

The whole world rocking up and down, swooping side to side, I hobbled
down the steps, leaning on Sohrab. From above, Assef's screams went on and on,
the cries of a wounded animal. We made it outside, into daylight, my arm around
Sohrab's shoulder, and I saw Farid running toward us.

"Bismillah! Bismillah!" he said, eyes bulging at the sight of me.

He slung my arm around his shoulder and lifted me. Carried me to the
truck, running. I think I screamed. I watched the way his sandals pounded the
pavement, slapped his black, calloused heels. It hurt to breathe. Then I was
looking up at the roof of the Land Cruiser, in the backseat, the upholstery beige
and ripped, listening to the ding-ding-ding signaling an open door. Running foot
steps around the truck. Farid and Sohrab exchanging quick words. The truck's
doors slammed shut and the engine roared to life. The car jerked forward and 1
felt a tiny hand on my forehead. I heard voices on the street, some shouting, and
saw trees blurring past in the window Sohrab was sobbing. Farid was still
repeating, "Bismillah! Bismillah!"

It was about then that I passed out.

TWENTY-THREE

Faces poke through the haze, linger, fade away. They peer down, ask me
questions. They all ask questions. Do I know who I am? Do I hurt anywhere? I
know who I am and I hurt everywhere. I want to tell them this but talking hurts.

I know this because some time ago, maybe a year ago, maybe two, maybe
ten, I tried to talk to a child with rouge on his cheeks and eyes smeared black.
The child. Yes, I see him now. We are in a car of sorts, the child and I, and I don't
think Soraya's driving because Soraya never drives this fast. I want to say
something to this child--it seems very important that I do. But I don't remember
what I want to say, or why it might have been important. Maybe I want to tell
him to stop crying, that everything will be all right now. Maybe not.

For some reason I can't think of, I want to thank the child.

Faces. They're all wearing green hats. They slip in and out of view They
talk rapidly, use words I don't understand. I hear other voices, other noises,
beeps and alarms. And always more faces. Peering down. I don't remember any
of them, except for the one with the gel in his hair and the Clark Gable mustache,
the one with the Africa stain on his cap. Mister Soap Opera Star. That's funny. I
want to laugh now. But laughing hurts too.

I fade out.

SHE SAYS HER NAME IS AISHA, "like the prophet's wife." Her graying hair is
parted in the middle and tied in a ponytail, her nose pierced with a stud shaped
like the sun. She wears bifocals that make her eyes bug out. She wears green too
and her hands are soft. She sees me looking at her and smiles. Says something in
English. Something is jabbing at the side of my chest.

I fade out.

A MAN IS STANDING at my bedside. I know him. He is dark and lanky, has a long
beard. He wears a hat--what are those hats called? Pakols? Wears it tilted to one
side like a famous person whose name escapes me now. I know this man. He
drove me somewhere a few years ago. I know him. There is something wrong
with my mouth. I hear a bubbling sound.

I fade out.

MY RIGHT ARM BURNS. The woman with the bifocals and sun-shaped stud is
hunched over my arm, attaching a clear plastic tubing to it. She says it's "the
Potassium." "It stings like a bee, no?" she says. It does. What's her name?
Something to do with a prophet. I know her too from a few years ago. She used to
wear her hair in a ponytail. Now it's pulled back, tied in a bun. Soraya wore her
hair like that the first time we spoke. When was that? Last week? Aisha! Yes.

There is something wrong with my mouth. And that thing jabbing at my

chest.

I fade out.

WE ARE IN THE SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS of Baluchistan and Baba is wrestling
the black bear. He is the Baba of my childhood, _Toophan agha_, the towering
specimen of Pashtun might, not the withered man under the blankets, the man
with the sunken cheeks and hollow eyes. They roll over a patch of green grass,
man and beast, Baba's curly brown hair flying. The bear roars, or maybe it's
Baba. Spittle and blood fly; claw and hand swipe. They fall to the ground with a
loud thud and Baba is sitting on the bear's chest, his fingers digging in its snout.
He looks up at me and I see. He's me. I am wrestling the bear.

I wake up. The lanky dark man is back at my bedside. His name is Farid, I
remember now. And with him is the child from the car. His face reminds me of
the sound of bells. I am thirsty.

I fade out.

I keep fading in and out.

THE NAME OF THE MAN with the Clark Gable mustache turned out to be Dr.
Faruqi. He wasn't a soap opera star at all, but a head-and-neck surgeon, though I
kept thinking of him as some one named Armand in some steamy soap set on a
tropical island.

Where am I? I wanted to ask. But my mouth wouldn't open. I frowned.
Grunted.

Armand smiled; his teeth were blinding white.

"Not yet, Amir," he said, "but soon. When the wires are out." He spoke
English with a thick, rolling Urdu accent.

Wires? Armand crossed his arms; he had hairy forearms and wore a gold
wedding band. "You must be wondering where you are, what happened to you.
That's perfectly normal, the post-surgical state is always disorienting. So I'll tell
you what I know."

I wanted to ask him about the wires. Post-surgical? Where was Aisha? I
wanted her to smile at me, wanted her soft hands in mine.

Armand frowned, cocked one eyebrow in a slightly self-important way.
"You are in a hospital in Peshawar. You've been here two days. You have suffered
some very significant injuries, Amir, I should tell you. I would say you're very
lucky to be alive, my friend." He swayed his index finger back and forth like a

pendulum when he said this. "Your spleen had ruptured, probably--and
fortunately for you-a delayed rupture, because you had signs of early
hemorrhage into your abdominal cavity. My colleagues from the general surgery
unit had to perform an emergency splenectomy. If it had ruptured earlier, you
would have bled to death." He patted me on the arm, the one with the IV, and
smiled. "You also suffered seven broken ribs. One of them caused a
pneumothorax."

I frowned. Tried to open my mouth. Remembered about the wires.

"That means a punctured lung," Armand explained. He tugged at a clear
plastic tubing on my left side. I felt the jabbing again in my chest. "We sealed the
leak with this chest tube." I followed the tube poking through bandages on my
chest to a container half filled with columns of water. The bubbling sound came
from there.

"You had also suffered various lacerations. That means 'cuts." I wanted to
tell him I knew what the word meant; I was a writer. I went to open my mouth.
Forgot about the wires again.

"The worst laceration was on your upper lip," Armand said. "The impact
had cut your upper lip in two, clean down the middle. But not to worry, the
plastics guys sewed it back together and they think you will have an excellent
result, though there will be a scar. That is unavoidable.

"There was also an orbital fracture on the left side; that's the eye socket
bone, and we had to fix that too. The wires in your jaws will come out in about
six weeks," Armand said. "Until then it's liquids and shakes. You will lose some
weight and you will be talking like A1 Pacino from the first Godfather movie for a
little while." He laughed. "But you have a job to do today. Do you know what it
is?"

I shook my head.

"Your job today is to pass gas. You do that and we can start feeding you
liquids. No fart, no food." He laughed again.

Later, after Aisha changed the IV tubing and raised the head of the bed
like I'd asked, I thought about what had happened to me. Ruptured spleen.
Broken teeth. Punctured lung. Busted eye socket. But as I watched a pigeon peck
at a bread crumb on the windowsill, I kept thinking of something else
Armand/Dr. Faruqi had said: The impact had cut your upper lip in two, he had
said, clean down the middle. Clean down the middle. Like a harelip.

FARID AND SOHRAB came to visit the next day. "Do you know who we are today?
Do you remember?" Farid said, only half-jokingly. I nodded.

"A1 hamdullellah!" he said, beaming. "No more talking nonsense."

"Thank you, Farid," I said through jaws wired shut. Armand was right--I
did sound like A1 Pacino from The Godfather. And my tongue surprised me every
time it poked in one of the empty spaces left by the teeth I had swallowed. "I
mean, thank you. For everything."

He waved a hand, blushed a little. "Bas, it's not worthy of thanks," he said.
I turned to Sohrab. He was wearing a new outfit, light brown pirhan-tumban that
looked a bit big for him, and a black skullcap. He was looking down at his feet,
toying with the IV line coiled on the bed.

"We were never properly introduced," I said. I offered him my hand. "I am

Amir."

He looked at my hand, then to me. "You are the Amir agha Father told me
about?" he said.

"Yes." I remembered the words from Hassan's letter. I have told much
about you to Farzana jan and Sohrab, about us growing up together and playing
games and running in the streets. They laugh at the stories of all the mischief you
and I used to cause! "I owe you thanks too, Sohrab jan," I said. "You saved my
life."

He didn't say anything. I dropped my hand when he didn't take it. "I like
your new clothes," I mumbled.

"They're my son's," Farid said. "He has outgrown them. They fit Sohrab
pretty well, I would say." Sohrab could stay with him, he said, until we found a
place for him. "We don't have a lot of room, but what can 1 do? I can't leave him
to the streets. Besides, my children have taken a liking to him. Ha, Sohrab?" But
the boy just kept looking down, twirling the line with his finger.

"I've been meaning to ask," Farid said, a little hesitantly. "What happened
in that house? What happened between you and the Talib?"

"Let's just say we both got what we deserved," I said.

Farid nodded, didn't push it. It occurred to me that somewhere between
the time we had left Peshawar for Afghanistan and now, we had become friends.
"I've been meaning to ask something too."

"What?"

I didn't want to ask. I was afraid of the answer. "Rahim Khan," I said.

"He's gone."

My heart skipped. "Is he--"

"No, just... gone." He handed me a folded piece of paper and a small key.
"The landlord gave me this when I went looking for him. He said Rahim Khan left
the day after we did."

Where did he go?

Farid shrugged. "The landlord didn't know He said Rahim Khan left the
letter and the key for you and took his leave." He checked his watch. "I'd better
go. Bia, Sohrab."

"Could you leave him here for a while?" I said. "Pick him up later?" I
turned to Sohrab. "Do you want to stay here with me for a little while?"

He shrugged and said nothing.

"Of course/' Farid said. "I'll pick him up just before evening _namaz_."

THERE WERE THREE OTHER PATIENTS in my room. Two older men, one with a
cast on his leg, the other wheezing with asthma, and a young man of fifteen or
sixteen who'd had appendix surgery. The old guy in the cast stared at us without
blinking, his eyes switching from me to the Hazara boy sitting on a stool. My
roommates' families--old women in bright shalwar-kameezes, children, men
wearing skullcaps-shuffled noisily in and out of the room. They brought with
them pakoras, _naan_, sa,nosas, biryani. Sometimes people just wandered into
the room, like the tall, bearded man who walked in just before Farid and Sohrab
arrived. He wore a brown blanket wrapped around him. Aisha asked him
something in Urdu. He paid her no attention and scanned the room with his eyes.
I thought he looked at me a little longer than necessary. When the nurse spoke to
him again, he just spun around and left.

"How are you?" I asked Sohrab. He shrugged, looked at his hands.

"Are you hungry? That lady there gave me a plate of biryani, but I can't eat
it," I said. I didn't know what else to say to him. "You want it?"

He shook his head.

Do you want to talk?

He shook his head again.

We sat there like that for a while, silent, me propped up in bed, two
pillows behind my back, Sohrab on the three-legged stool next to the bed. I fell
asleep at some point, and, when I woke up, daylight had dimmed a bit, the
shadows had stretched, and Sohrab was still sitting next to me. He was still
looking down at his hands.

THAT NIGHT, after Farid picked up Sohrab, I unfolded Rahim Khan's letter. I had
delayed reading it as long as possible. It read: Amir jan, _Inshallah_, you have
reached this letter safely. I pray that I have not put you in harm's way and that
Afghanistan has not been too unkind to you. You have been in my prayers since
the day you left. You were right all those years to suspect that I knew. I did know.
Hassan told me shortly after it happened. What you did was wrong, Amir jan, but
do not forget that you were a boy when it happened. A troubled little boy. You
were too hard on yourself then, and you still are-I saw it in your eyes in
Peshawar. But I hope you will heed this: A man who has no conscience, no
goodness, does not suffer. I hope your suffering comes to an end with this
journey to Afghanistan.

Amir jan, I am ashamed for the lies we told you all those years. You were
right to be angry in Peshawar. You had a right to know. So did Hassan. I know it
doesn't absolve anyone of anything, but the Kabul we lived in in those days was a
strange world, one in which some things mattered more than the truth.

Amir jan, I know how hard your father was on you when you were
growing up. I saw how you suffered and yearned for his affections, and my heart
bled for you. But your father was a man torn between two halves, Amir jan: you
and Hassan. He loved you both, but he could not love Hassan the way he longed
to, openly, and as a father. So he took it out on you instead-Amir, the socially
legitimate half, the half that represented the riches he had inherited and the sin-
with-impunity privileges that came with them. When he saw you, he saw himself.
And his guilt. You are still angry and I realize it is far too early to expect you to
accept this, but maybe someday you will see that when your father was hard on
you, he was also being hard on himself. Your father, like you, was a tortured soul,
Amir jan.

I cannot describe to you the depth and blackness of the sorrow that came
over me when 1 learned of his passing. I loved him because he was my friend, but

also because he was a good man, maybe even a great man. And this is what I
want you to understand, that good, real good, was born out of your father's
remorse. Sometimes, I think everything he did, feeding the poor on the streets,
building the orphanage, giving money to friends in need, it was all his way of
redeeming himself. And that, I believe, is what true redemption is, Amir jan,
when guilt leads to good.

I know that in the end, God will forgive. He will forgive your father, me,
and you too. I hope you can do the same. Forgive your father if you can. Forgive
me if you wish. But, most important, forgive yourself.

I have left you some money, most of what I have left, in fact. I think you
may have some expenses when you return here, and the money should be
enough to cover them. There is a bank in Peshawar; Farid knows the location.
The money is in a safe-deposit box. I have given you the key.

As for me, it is time to go. I have little time left and I wish to spend it
alone. Please do not look for me. That is my final request of you.

I leave you in the hands of God.

Your friend always,

Rahim

I dragged the hospital gown sleeve across my eyes. I folded the letter and put it
under my mattress.

Amir, the socially legitimate half, the half that represented the riches he
had inherited and the sin-with-impunity privileges that came with them. Maybe
that was why Baba and I had been on such better terms in the U.S., I wondered.
Selling junk for petty cash, our menial jobs, our grimy apartment-the American
version of a hut; maybe in America, when Baba looked at me, he saw a little bit of
Hassan.

Your father, like you, was a tortured soul, Rahim Khan had written. Maybe
so. We had both sinned and betrayed. But Baba had found a way to create good
out of his remorse. What had I done, other than take my guilt out on the very
same people I had betrayed, and then try to forget it all? What had I done, other
than become an insomniac? What had I ever done to right things? When the
nurse--not Aisha but a red-haired woman whose name escapes me-walked in
with a syringe in hand and asked me if I needed a morphine injection, I said yes.

THEY REMOVED THE CHEST TUBE early the next morning, and Armand gave the
staff the go-ahead to let me sip apple juice. I asked Aisha for a mirror when she
placed the cup of juice on the dresser next to my bed. She lifted her bifocals to
her forehead as she pulled the curtain open and let the morning sun flood the
room. "Remember, now," she said over her shoulder, "it will look better in a few
days. My son-in-law was in a moped accident last year. His handsome face was
dragged on the asphalt and became purple like an eggplant. Now he is beautiful
again, like a Hollywood movie star."

Despite her reassurances, looking in the mirror and seeing the thing that
insisted it was my face left me a little breathless. It looked like someone had
stuck an air pump nozzle under my skin and had pumped away. My eyes were
puffy and blue. The worst of it was my mouth, a grotesque blob of purple and
red, all bruise and stitches. I tried to smile and a bolt of pain ripped through my
lips. I wouldn't be doing that for a while. There were stitches across my left
cheek, just under the chin, on the forehead just below the hairline.

The old guy with the leg cast said something in Urdu. 1 gave him a shrug
and shook my head. He pointed to his face, patted it, and grinned a wide,
toothless grin. "Very good," he said in English. "Ins hallah**."

"Thank you," I whispered.

Farid and Sohrab came in just as I put the mirror away. Sohrab took his
seat on the stool, rested his head on the bed's side rail.

'You know, the sooner we get you out of here the better," Farid said.

Dr. Faruqi says--"-

"I don't mean the hospital. I mean Peshawar."

"Why?"

"I don't think you'll be safe here for long," Farid said. He lowered his

voice.

"The Taliban have friends here. They will start looking for you."

"I think they already may have," I murmured. I thought suddenly of the
bearded man who'd wandered into the room and just stood there staring at me.

Farid leaned in. "As soon as you can walk, I'll take you to Islamabad. Not
entirely safe there either, no place in Pakistan is, but it's better than here. At least
it will buy you some time."

"Farid jan, this can't be safe for you either. Maybe you shouldn't be seen
with me. You have a family to take care of."

Farid made a waving gesture. "My boys are young, but they are very
shrewd. They know how to take care of their mothers and sisters." He smiled.
"Besides, I didn't say I'd do it for free."

"I wouldn't let you if you offered," I said. I forgot I couldn't smile and tried.
A tiny streak of blood trickled down my chin. "Can I ask you for one more favor?"

"For you a thousand times over," Farid said.

And, just like that, I was crying. I hitched gusts of air, tears gushing down
my cheeks, stinging the raw flesh of my lips.

What's the matter?" Farid said, alarmed.

I buried my face in one hand and held up the other. I knew the whole
room was watching me. After, I felt tired, hollow. "I'm sorry," I said. Sohrab was
looking at me with a frown creasing his brow.

When I could talk again, I told Farid what I needed. "Rahim Khan said they
live here in Peshawar."

"Maybe you should write down their names," Farid said, eyeing me
cautiously, as if wondering what might set me off next. I scribbled their names on
a scrap of paper towel. "John and Betty Caldwell."

Farid pocketed the folded piece of paper. "I will look for them as soon as I
can," he said. He turned to Sohrab. "As for you, I'll pick you up this evening. Don't
tire Amir agha too much."

But Sohrab had wandered to the window, where a half-dozen pigeons
strutted back and forth on the sill, pecking at wood and scraps of old bread.

IN THE MIDDLE DRAWER of the dresser beside my bed, I had found an old
_National Geographic, magazine, a chewed-up pencil, a comb with missing teeth,
and what I was reaching for now, sweat pouring down my face from the effort: a
deck of cards. I had counted them earlier and, surprisingly, found the deck
complete. I asked Sohrab if he wanted to play. I didn't expect him to answer, let
alone play. He'd been quiet since we had fled Kabul.

But he turned from the window and said, "The only game I know is
panjpar."

"I feel sorry for you already, because I am a grand master at panjpar.
World renowned."

He took his seat on the stool next to me. 1 dealt him his five cards. "When
your father and I were your age, we used to play this game. Especially in the
winter, when it snowed and we couldn't go outside. We used to play until the sun
went down."

He played me a card and picked one up from the pile. I stole looks at him
as he pondered his cards. He was his father in so many ways: the way he fanned
out his cards with both hands, the way he squinted while reading them, the way
he rarely looked a person in the eye.

We played in silence. I won the first game, let him win the next one, and
lost the next five fair and square. "You're as good as your father, maybe even
better," I said, after my last loss. "I used to beat him sometimes, but I think he let
me win." I paused before saying, "Your father and I were nursed by the same
woman."

"I know."

"What... what did he tell you about us?"

"That you were the best friend he ever had," he said.

I twirled the jack of diamonds in my fingers, flipped it back and forth. "I
wasn't such a good friend, I'm afraid," I said. "But I'd like to be your friend. I
think I could be a good friend to you. Would that be all right? Would you like
that?" I put my hand on his arm, gingerly, but he flinched. He dropped his cards
and pushed away on the stool. He walked back to the window. The sky was
awash with streaks of red and purple as the sun set on Peshawar. From the
street below came a succession of honks and the braying of a donkey, the whistle
of a policeman. Sohrab stood in that crimson light, forehead pressed to the glass,
fists buried in his armpits.

AISHA HAD A MALE ASSISTANT help me take my first steps that night. I only
walked around the room once, one hand clutching the wheeled IV stand, the

other clasping the assistant's fore arm. It took me ten minutes to make it back to
bed, and, by then, the incision on my stomach throbbed and I'd broken out in a
drenching sweat. I lay in bed, gasping, my heart hammering in my ears, thinking
how much I missed my wife.

Sohrab and I played panjpar most of the next day, again in silence. And
the day after that. We hardly spoke, just played panjpar, me propped in bed, he
on the three-legged stool, our routine broken only by my taking a walk around
the room, or going to the bathroom down the hall. I had a dream later that night.

I dreamed Assef was standing in the doorway of my hospital room, brass ball still
in his eye socket. "We're the same, you and I," he was saying. "You nursed with
him, but you're my twin."

I TOLD ARMAND early that next day that I was leaving.

"It's still early for discharge," Armand protested. He wasn't dressed in
surgical scrubs that day, instead in a button-down navy blue suit and yellow tie.
The gel was back in the hair. "You are still in intravenous antibiotics and-"

"I have to go," I said. "I appreciate everything you've done for me, all of

you.

Really. But I have to leave."

"Where will you go?" Armand said.

"I'd rather not say."

"You can hardly walk."

I can walk to the end of the hall and back," I said

11 be fine.

The plan was this: Leave the hospital. Get the money from the safe-
deposit box and pay my medical bills. Drive to the orphanage and drop Sohrab
off with John and Betty Caldwell. Then get a ride to Islamabad and change travel
plans. Give myself a few more days to get better. Fly home.

That was the plan, anyway. Until Farid and Sohrab arrived that morning.
"Your friends, this John and Betty Caldwell, they aren't in Peshawar," Farid said.

It had taken me ten minutes just to slip into my pirhan tumban. My chest,
where they'd cut me to insert the chest tube hurt when I raised my arm, and my
stomach throbbed every time I leaned over. I was drawing ragged breaths just
from the effort of packing a few of my belongings into a brown paper bag. But I'd
managed to get ready and was sitting on the edge of the bed when Farid came in
with the news. Sohrab sat on the bed next to me.

"Where did they go?" I asked.

Farid shook his head. "You don't understand-"

"Because Rahim Khan said-"

"I went to the U.S. consulate," Farid said, picking up my bag. "There never
was a John and Betty Caldwell in Peshawar. According to the people at the
consulate, they never existed. Not here in Peshawar, anyhow."

Next to me, Sohrab was flipping through the pages of the old National
Geographic.

WE GOT THE MONEY from the bank. The manager, a paunchy man with sweat
patches under his arms, kept flashing smiles and telling me that no one in the
bank had touched the money.

"Absolutely nobody," he said gravely, swinging his index finger the same
way Armand had.

Driving through Peshawar with so much money in a paper bag was a
slightly frightening experience. Plus, I suspected every bearded man who stared
at me to be a Talib killer, sent by Assef. Two things compounded my fears: There
are a lot of bearded men in Peshawar, and everybody stares.

"What do we do with him?" Farid said, walking me slowly from the
hospital accounting office back to the car. Sohrab was in the backseat of the Land
Cruiser, looking at traffic through the rolled-down window, chin resting on his
palms.

"He can't stay in Peshawar," I said, panting.

"Nay, Amir agha, he can't," Farid said. He'd read the question in my words.
"I'm sorry. I wish I—"

"That's all right, Farid," I said. I managed a tired smile. "You have mouths
to feed." A dog was standing next to the truck now, propped on its rear legs,
paws on the truck's door, tail wagging. Sohrab was petting the dog. "I guess he
goes to Islamabad for now," I said.

I SLEPT THROUGH almost the entire four-hour ride to Islamabad. I dreamed a
lot, and most of it I only remember as a hodgepodge of images, snippets of visual
memory flashing in my head like cards in a Rolodex: Baba marinating lamb for
my thirteenth birthday party. Soraya and I making love for the first time, the sun
rising in the east, our ears still ringing from the wedding music, her henna-
painted hands laced in mine. The time Baba had taken Hassan and me to a
strawberry field in Jalalabad-the owner had told us we could eat as much as we
wanted to as long as we bought at least four kilos-and how we'd both ended up
with bellyaches. How dark, almost black, Hassan's blood had looked on the snow,
dropping from the seat of his pants. Blood is a powerful thing, bachem. Khala
Jamila patting Soraya's knee and saying, God knows best, maybe it wasn't meant
to be. Sleeping on the roof of my father's house. Baba saying that the only sin that
mattered was theft. When you tell a lie, you steal a man's right to the truth.

Rahim Khan on the phone, telling me there was a way to be good again. A way to
be good again...

TWENTY-FOUR

If Peshawar was the city that reminded me of what Kabul used to be, then
Islamabad was the city Kabul could have become someday. The streets were
wider than Peshawar's, cleaner, and lined with rows of hibiscus and flame trees.
The bazaars were more organized and not nearly as clogged with rickshaws and
pedestrians. The architecture was more elegant too, more modern, and I saw
parks where roses and jasmine bloomed in the shadows of trees.

Farid found a small hotel on a side street running along the foot of the
Margalla Hills. We passed the famous Shah Faisal Mosque on the way there,
reputedly the biggest mosque in the world, with its giant concrete girders and
soaring minarets. Sohrab perked up at the sight of the mosque, leaned out of the
window and looked at it until Farid turned a corner.

THE HOTEL ROOM was a vast improvement over the one in Kabul where Farid
and I had stayed. The sheets were clean, the carpet vacuumed, and the bathroom
spotless. There was shampoo, soap, razors for shaving, a bathtub, and towels that
smelled like lemon. And no bloodstains on the walls. One other thing: a television
set sat on the dresser across from the two single beds.

"Look!" I said to Sohrab. I turned it on manually-no remote-and turned
the dial. I found a children's show with two fluffy sheep puppets singing in Urdu.

Sohrab sat on one of the beds and drew his knees to his chest. Images
from the TV reflected in his green eyes as he watched, stone-faced, rocking back
and forth. I remembered the time I'd promised Hassan I'd buy his family a color
TV when we both grew up.

"I'll get going, Amir agha," Farid said.

"Stay the night," I said. "It's a long drive. Leave tomorrow."

"Tashakor," he said. "But I want to get back tonight. I miss my children."
On his way out of the room, he paused in the doorway. "Good-bye, Sohrab jan,"
he said. He waited for a reply, but Sohrab paid him no attention. Just rocked back
and forth, his face lit by the silver glow of the images flickering across the screen.

Outside, I gave him an envelope. When he tore it, his mouth opened.

"I didn't know how to thank you," I said. "You've done so much for me."

"How much is in here?" Farid said, slightly dazed.

"A little over two thousand dollars."

"Two thou-" he began. His lower lip was quivering a little. Later, when he
pulled away from the curb, he honked twice and waved. I waved back. I never
saw him again.

I returned to the hotel room and found Sohrab lying on the bed, curled up
in a big C. His eyes were closed but I couldn't tell if he was sleeping. He had shut
off the television. I sat on my bed and grimaced with pain, wiped the cool sweat
off my brow. I wondered how much longer it would hurt to get up, sit down, roll
over in bed. I wondered when I'd be able to eat solid food. I wondered what I'd
do with the wounded little boy lying on the bed, though a part of me already
knew.

There was a carafe of water on the dresser. I poured a glass and took two
of Armand's pain pills. The water was warm and bitter. I pulled the curtains,
eased myself back on the bed, and lay down. I thought my chest would rip open.
When the pain dropped a notch and I could breathe again, I pulled the blanket to
my chest and waited for Armand's pills to work.

WHEN I WOKE UP, the room was darker. The slice of sky peeking between the
curtains was the purple of twilight turning into night. The sheets were soaked
and my head pounded. I'd been dreaming again, but I couldn't remember what it
had been about.

My heart gave a sick lurch when I looked to Sohrab's bed and found it
empty I called his name. The sound of my voice startled me. It was disorienting,
sitting in a dark hotel room, thousands of miles from home, my body broken,
calling the name of a boy I'd only met a few days ago. I called his name again and
heard nothing. I struggled out of bed, checked the bathroom, looked in the
narrow hallway outside the room. He was gone.

I locked the door and hobbled to the manager's office in the lobby, one
hand clutching the rail along the walkway for support. There was a fake, dusty
palm tree in the corner of the lobby and flying pink flamingos on the wallpaper. I
found the hotel manager reading a newspaper behind the Formica-topped check¬
in counter. I described Sohrab to him, asked if he'd seen him. He put down his
paper and took off his reading glasses. He had greasy hair and a square-shaped
little mustache speckled with gray. He smelled vaguely of some tropical fruit I
couldn't quite recognize.

"Boys, they like to run around," he said, sighing. "I have three of them. All
day they are running around, troubling their mother." He fanned his face with
the newspaper, staring at my jaws.

"I don't think he's out running around," I said. "And we're not from here.
I'm afraid he might get lost."

He bobbed his head from side to side. "Then you should have kept an eye
on the boy, mister."

I know," I said. "But I fell asleep and when I woke up, he was gone.

"Boys must be tended to, you know."

"Yes," I said, my pulse quickening. How could he be so oblivious to my
apprehension? He shifted the newspaper to his other hand, resumed the fanning.

"They want bicycles now"

"Who?"

"My boys," he said. "They're saying, 'Daddy, Daddy, please buy us bicycles
and we'll not trouble you. Please, Daddy!" He gave a short laugh through his
nose. "Bicycles. Their mother will kill me, I swear to you."

1 imagined Sohrab lying in a ditch. Or in the trunk of some car, bound and
gagged. I didn't want his blood on my hands. Not his too. "Please..." I said. I
squinted. Read his name tag on the lapel of his short-sleeve blue cotton shirt.
"Mr. Fayyaz, have you seen him?"

"The boy?"

I bit down. "Yes, the boy! The boy who came with me. Have you seen him
or not, for God's sake?"

The fanning stopped. His eyes narrowed. "No getting smart with me, my
friend. I am not the one who lost him."

That he had a point did not stop the blood from rushing to my face.
"You're right. I'm wrong. My fault. Now, have you seen him?"

Sorry," he said curtly. He put his glasses back on. Snapped his newspaper

open.

"I have seen no such boy."

I stood at the counter for a minute, trying not to scream. As I was exiting
the lobby, he said, "Any idea where he might have wandered to?"

"No," I said. I felt tired. Tired and scared.

"Does he have any interests?" he said. I saw he had folded the paper. "My
boys, for example, they will do anything for American action films, especially
with that Arnold ??WThatsanegger--"

"The mosque!" I said. "The big mosque." I remembered the way the
mosque had jolted Sohrab from his stupor when we'd driven by it, how he'd
leaned out of the window looking at it.

"Shah Faisal?"

"Yes. Can you take me there?"

"Did you know it's the biggest mosque in the world?" he asked.

"No, but-"

"The courtyard alone can fit forty thousand people."

"Can you take me there?"

"It's only a kilometer from here," he said. But he was already pushing
away from the counter.

"I'll pay you for the ride/' I said.

He sighed and shook his head. "Wait here." He disappeared into the back
room, returned wearing another pair of eyeglasses, a set of keys in hand, and
with a short, chubby woman in an orange sari trailing him. She took his seat
behind the counter. "I don't take your money," he said, blowing by me. "I will
drive you because I am a father like you."

I THOUGHT WE'D END UP DRIVING around the city until night fell. I saw myself
calling the police, describing Sohrab to them under Fayyaz's reproachful glare. I
heard the officer, his voice tired and uninterested, asking his obligatory
questions. And beneath the official questions, an unofficial one: Who the hell
cared about another dead Afghan kid? But we found him about a hundred yards
from the mosque, sitting in the half-full parking lot, on an island of grass. Fayyaz
pulled up to the island and let me out. "I have to get back," he said.

"That's fine. We'll walk back," I said. "Thank you, Mr. Fayyaz. Really."

He leaned across the front seat when I got out. "Can I say something to

you?"

Sure.

In the dark of twilight, his face was just a pair of eyeglasses reflecting the
fading light. "The thing about you Afghanis is that... well, you people are a little
reckless."

I was tired and in pain. My jaws throbbed. And those damn wounds on my
chest and stomach felt like barbed wire under my skin. But I started to laugh
anyway.

"What... what did I..." Fayyaz was saying, but I was cackling by then, full-
throated bursts of laughter spilling through my wired mouth.

"Crazy people," he said. His tires screeched when he peeled away, his tail-
lights blinking red in the dimming light.

"You GAVE ME A GOOD SCARE," I said. I sat beside him, wincing with pain
as I bent.

He was looking at the mosque. Shah Faisal Mosque was shaped like a
giant tent. Cars came and went; worshipers dressed in white streamed in and
out. We sat in silence, me leaning against the tree, Sohrab next to me, knees to his
chest. We listened to the call to prayer, watched the building's hundreds of lights
come on as daylight faded. The mosque sparkled like a diamond in the dark. It lit
up the sky, Sohrab's face.

"Have you ever been to Mazar-i-Sharif?" Sohrab said, his chin resting on
his kneecaps.

"A long time ago. 1 don't remember it much."

"Father took me there when I was little. Mother and Sasa came along too.
Father bought me a monkey from the bazaar. Not a real one but the kind you
have to blow up. It was brown and had a bow tie."

"I might have had one of those when I was a kid."

"Father took me to the Blue Mosque," Sohrab said. "I remember there
were so many pigeons outside the masjid, and they weren't afraid of people.
They came right up to us. Sasa gave me little pieces of _naan_ and I fed the birds.
Soon, there were pigeons cooing all around me. That was fun."

"You must miss your parents very much," I said. I wondered if he'd seen
the Taliban drag his parents out into the street. I hoped he hadn't.

"Do you miss your parents?" he asked, resting his cheek on his knees,
looking up at me.

"Do I miss my parents? Well, I never met my mother. My father died a few
years ago, and, yes, I do miss him. Sometimes a lot."

"Do you remember what he looked like?"

I thought of Baba's thick neck, his black eyes, his unruly brown hair.
Sitting on his lap had been like sitting on a pair of tree trunks. "1 remember what
he looked like," 1 said. "What he smelled like too."

"I'm starting to forget their faces," Sohrab said. "Is that bad?"

"No," I said. "Time does that." I thought of something. I looked in the front
pocket of my coat. Found the Polaroid snap shot of Hassan and Sohrab. "Here," I
said.

He brought the photo to within an inch of his face, turned it so the light
from the mosque fell on it. He looked at it for a long time. I thought he might cry,
but he didn't. He just held it in both hands, traced his thumb over its surface. I
thought of a line I'd read somewhere, or maybe I'd heard someone say it: There
are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood. He stretched his hand to
give it back to me.

"Keep it," I said. "It's yours."

"Thank you." He looked at the photo again and stowed it in the pocket of
his vest. A horse-drawn cart clip-clopped by in the parking lot. Little bells
dangled from the horse's neck and jingled with each step.

"I've been thinking a lot about mosques lately," Sohrab said.

'You have? What about them?

He shrugged. "Just thinking about them." He lifted his face, looked straight
at me. Now he was crying, softly, silently. "Can I ask you something, Amir agha?"

"Of course."

"Will God..." he began, and choked a little. "Will God put me in hell for
what I did to that man?"

I reached for him and he flinched. I pulled back. "Nay. Of course not," I
said. 1 wanted to pull him close, hold him, tell him the world had been unkind to
him, not the other way around.

His face twisted and strained to stay composed. "Father used to say it's
wrong to hurt even bad people. Because they don't know any better, and because
bad people sometimes become good."

"Not always, Sohrab."

He looked at me questioningly.

"The man who hurt you, I knew him from many years ago," I said. "I guess
you figured that out that from the conversation he and I had. He... he tried to hurt
me once when I was your age, but your father saved me. Your father was very
brave and he was always rescuing me from trouble, standing up for me. So one
day the bad man hurt your father instead. He hurt him in a very bad way, and I... I
couldn't save your father the way he had saved me."

"Why did people want to hurt my father?" Sohrab said in a wheezy little
voice. "He was never mean to anyone."

"You're right. Your father was a good man. But that's what I'm trying to
tell you, Sohrab jan. That there are bad people in this world, and sometimes bad
people stay bad. Sometimes you have to stand up to them. What you did to that
man is what I should have done to him all those years ago. You gave him what he
deserved, and he deserved even more."

Do you think Father is disappointed in me?

"I know he's not," I said. "You saved my life in Kabul. I know he is very
proud of you for that."

He wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt. It burst a bubble of spittle
that had formed on his lips. He buried his face in his hands and wept a long time
before he spoke again. "I miss Father, and Mother too," he croaked. "And I miss
Sasa and Rahim Khan sahib. But sometimes I'm glad they're not... they're not
here anymore."

"Why?" I touched his arm. He drew back.

"Because--" he said, gasping and hitching between sobs, "because I don't
want them to see me... I'm so dirty." He sucked in his breath and let it out in a
long, wheezy cry. "I'm so dirty and full of sin."

"You're not dirty, Sohrab," I said.

"Those men-"

"You're not dirty at all."

"-they did things... the bad man and the other two... they did things... did
things to me."

"You're not dirty, and you're not full of sin." I touched his arm again and
he drew away. I reached again, gently, and pulled him to me. "I won't hurt you," I
whispered. "I promise." He resisted a little. Slackened. He let me draw him to me
and rested his head on my chest. His little body convulsed in my arms with each
sob.

A kinship exists between people who've fed from the same breast. Now,
as the boy's pain soaked through my shirt, I saw that a kinship had taken root

between us too. What had happened in that room with Assef had irrevocably
bound us.

I'd been looking for the right time, the right moment, to ask the question
that had been buzzing around in my head and keeping me up at night. I decided
the moment was now, right here, right now, with the bright lights of the house of
God shining on us.

"Would you like to come live in America with me and my wife?"

He didn't answer. He sobbed into my shirt and I let him.

FOR A WEEK, neither one of us mentioned what I had asked him, as if the
question hadn't been posed at all. Then one day, Sohrab and 1 took a taxicab to
the Daman-e-Koh Viewpoint--or "the hem of the mountain." Perched midway up
the Margalla Hills, it gives a panoramic view of Islamabad, its rows of clean, tree-
lined avenues and white houses. The driver told us we could see the presidential
palace from up there. "If it has rained and the air is clear, you can even see past
Rawalpindi," he said. I saw his eyes in his rearview mirror, skipping from Sohrab
to me, back and forth, back and forth. I saw my own face too. It wasn't as swollen
as before, but it had taken on a yellow tint from my assortment of fading bruises.

We sat on a bench in one of the picnic areas, in the shade of a gum tree. It
was a warm day, the sun perched high in a topaz blue sky. On benches nearby,
families snacked on samosas and pakoras. Somewhere, a radio played a Hindi
song I thought I remembered from an old movie, maybe Pakeeza. Kids, many of
them Sohrab's age, chased soccer balls, giggling, yelling. I thought about the
orphanage in Karteh-Seh, thought about the rat that had scurried between my
feet in Zaman's office. My chest tightened with a surge of unexpected anger at the
way my countrymen were destroying their own land.

"What?" Sohrab asked. I forced a smile and told him it wasn't important.

We unrolled one of the hotel's bathroom towels on the picnic table and
played panjpar on it. It felt good being there, with my half brother's son, playing

cards, the warmth of the sun patting the back of my neck. The song ended and
another one started, one I didn't recognize.

"Look," Sohrab said. He was pointing to the sky with his cards. I looked
up, saw a hawk circling in the broad seamless sky. "Didn't know there were
hawks in Islamabad," I said.

"Me neither," he said, his eyes tracing the bird's circular flight. "Do they
have them where you live?"

"San Francisco? I guess so. I can't say I've seen too many, though."

"Oh," he said. I was hoping he'd ask more, but he dealt another hand and
asked if we could eat. I opened the paper bag and gave him his meatball
sandwich. My lunch consisted of yet another cup of blended bananas and
oranges--Td rented Mrs. Fayyaz's blender for the week. I sucked through the
straw and my mouth filled with the sweet, blended fruit. Some of it dripped from
the corner of my lips. Sohrab handed me a napkin and watched me dab at my
lips. I smiled and he smiled back.

"Your father and I were brothers," I said. It just came out. I had wanted to
tell him the night we had sat by the mosque, but I hadn't. But he had a right to
know; I didn't want to hide anything anymore. "Half brothers, really. We had the
same father."

Sohrab stopped chewing. Put the sandwich down. "Father never said he
had a brother."

"That's because he didn't know."

"Why didn't he know?"

"No one told him," I said. "No one told me either. I just found out
recently."

Sohrab blinked. Like he was looking at me, really looking at me, for the
very first time. "But why did people hide it from Father and you?"

"You know, I asked myself that same question the other day. And there's
an answer, but not a good one. Let's just say they didn't tell us because your
father and I... we weren't supposed to be brothers."

"Because he was a Hazara?"

I willed my eyes to stay on him. "Yes."

"Did your father," he began, eyeing his food, "did your father love you and
my father equally?"

I thought of a long ago day at Ghargha Lake, when Baba had allowed
himself to pat Hassan on the back when Hassan's stone had out skipped mine. I
pictured Baba in the hospital room, beaming as they removed the bandages from
Hassan's lips. "I think he loved us equally but differently."

"Was he ashamed of my father?"

"No," I said. "I think he was ashamed of himself."

He picked up his sandwich and nibbled at it silently.

WE LEFT LATE THAT AFTERNOON, tired from the heat, but tired in a pleasant
way. All the way back, I felt Sohrab watching me. I had the driver pull over at a
store that sold calling cards. I gave him the money and a tip for running in and
buying me one.

That night, we were lying on our beds, watching a talk show on TV. Two
clerics with pepper gray long beards and white turbans were taking calls from
the faithful all over the world. One caller from Finland, a guy named Ayub, asked
if his teenaged son could go to hell for wearing his baggy pants so low the seam
of his underwear showed.

"I saw a picture of San Francisco once," Sohrab said.

"Really?"

"There was a red bridge and a building with a pointy top."

"You should see the streets," I said.

"What about them?" He was looking at me now. On the TV screen, the two
mullahs were consulting each other.

"They're so steep, when you drive up all you see is the hood of your car
and the sky," I said.

"It sounds scary," he said. He rolled to his side, facing me, his back to the
TV.

"It is the first few times," I said. "But you get used to it."

"Does it snow there?"

"No, but we get a lot of fog. You know that red bridge you saw?"

'Yes.

"Sometimes the fog is so thick in the morning, all you see is the tip of the
two towers poking through."

There was wonder in his smile. "Oh."

"Sohrab?"

"Yes."

"Have you given any thought to what I asked you before?"

His smiled faded. He rolled to his back. Laced his hands under his head.
The mullahs decided that Ayub's son would go to hell after all for wearing his
pants the way he did. They claimed it was in the Haddith. "I've thought about it,
Sohrab said.

"And?

H

"It scares me."

"I know it's a little scary," I said, grabbing onto that loose thread of hope

"But you'll learn English so fast and you'll get used to--"

"That's not what I mean. That scares me too, but...

"But what?"

He rolled toward me again. Drew his knees up. "What if you get tired of
me? What if your wife doesn't like me?"

I struggled out of bed and crossed the space between us. I sat beside him.
"I won't ever get tired of you, Sohrab," I said. "Not ever. That's a promise. You're
my nephew, remember? And Soraya jan, she's a very kind woman. Trust me,
she's going to love you. I promise that too." I chanced something. Reached down
and took his hand. He tightened up a little but let me hold it.

"I don't want to go to another orphanage," he said.

"I won't ever let that happen. I promise you that." I cupped his hand in
both of mine. "Come home with me."

His tears were soaking the pillow. He didn't say anything for a long time.
Then his hand squeezed mine back. And he nodded. He nodded.

THE CONNECTION WENT THROUGH on the fourth try. The phone rang three
times before she picked it up. "Hello?" It was 7:30 in the evening in Islamabad,
roughly about the same time in the morning in California. That meant Soraya had
been up for an hour, getting ready for school.

"It's me," I said. I was sitting on my bed, watching Sohrab sleep.

"Amir!" she almost screamed. "Are you okay? Where are you?"

"I'm in Pakistan."

"Why didn't you call earlier? I've been sick with tashweesh! My mother's
praying and doing nazr every day."

"I'm sorry I didn't call. I'm fine now." I had told her I'd be away a week,
two at the most. I'd been gone for nearly a month. I smiled. "And tell Khala Jamila
to stop killing sheep."

What do you mean 'fine now'? And what's wrong with your voice?

"Don't worry about that for now. I'm fine. Really. Soraya, I have a story to
tell you, a story I should have told you a long time ago, but first I need to tell you
one thing."

"What is it?" she said, her voice lower now, more cautious.

"I'm not coming home alone. I'm bringing a little boy with me." I paused.
"I want us to adopt him."

"What?"

I checked my watch. "I have fifty-seven minutes left on this stupid calling
card and I have so much to tell you. Sit some where." I heard the legs of a chair
dragged hurriedly across the wooden floor.

"Go ahead," she said.

Then I did what I hadn't done in fifteen years of marriage: I told my wife
everything. Everything. I had pictured this moment so many times, dreaded it,
but, as I spoke, I felt something lifting off my chest. I imagined Soraya had
experienced something very similar the night of our khastegari, when she'd told
me about her past.

By the time I was done with my story, she was weeping.

"What do you think?" I said.

"I don't know what to think, Amir. You've told me so much all at once."

I realize that.

I heard her blowing her nose. "But I know this much: You have to bring
him home.

I want you to."

"Are you sure?" I said, closing my eyes and smiling.

"Am I sure?" she said. "Amir, he's your qaom, your family, so he's my
qaom too. Of course I'm sure. You can't leave him to the streets." There was a
short pause. "What's he like?"

I looked over at Sohrab sleeping on the bed. "He's sweet, in a solemn kind
of way."

"Who can blame him?" she said. "I want to see him, Amir. I really do."

"Soraya?"

"Yeah."

"Dostet darum." I love you.

"I love you back," she said. I could hear the smile in her words. "And be
careful."

"I will. And one more thing. Don't tell your parents who he is. If they need
to know, it should come from me."

"Okay.

ii

We hung up.

THE LAWN OUTSIDE the American embassy in Islamabad was neatly mowed,
dotted with circular clusters of flowers, bordered by razor-straight hedges. The
building itself was like a lot of buildings in Islamabad: flat and white. We passed
through several road blocks to get there and three different security officials
conducted a body search on me after the wires in my jaws set off the metal
detectors. When we finally stepped in from the heat, the air-conditioning hit my
face like a splash of ice water. The secretary in the lobby, a fifty-something, lean¬
faced blond woman, smiled when I gave her my name. She wore a beige blouse
and black slacks-the first woman I'd seen in weeks dressed in something other
than a burqa or a shalwar-kameez. She looked me up on the appointment list,
tapping the eraser end of her pencil on the desk. She found my name and asked
me to take a seat.

"Would you like some lemonade?" she asked.

"None for me, thanks," I said.

"How about your son?"

"Excuse me?"

"The handsome young gentleman," she said, smiling at Sohrab.

"Oh. That'd be nice, thank you."

Sohrab and I sat on the black leather sofa across the reception desk, next
to a tall American flag. Sohrab picked up a magazine from the glass-top coffee
table. He flipped the pages, not really looking at the pictures.

What?" Sohrab said.

Sorry?

"You're smiling."

"I was thinking about you," I said.

He gave a nervous smile. Picked up another magazine and flipped through
it in under thirty seconds.

"Don't be afraid," I said, touching his arm. "These people are friendly.
Relax." I could have used my own advice. I kept shifting in my seat, untying and
retying my shoelaces. The secretary placed a tall glass of lemonade with ice on
the coffee table. "There you go."

Sohrab smiled shyly. "Thank you very much," he said in English. It came
out as "Tank you wery match." It was the only English he knew, he'd told me, that
and "Have a nice day."

She laughed. "You're most welcome." She walked back to her desk, high
heels clicking on the floor.

"Have a nice day," Sohrab said.

RAYMOND ANDREWS was a short fellow with small hands, nails perfectly
trimmed, wedding band on the ring finger. He gave me a curt little shake; it felt
like squeezing a sparrow. Those are the hands that hold our fates, I thought as
Sohrab and I seated our selves across from his desk. A _Les Miserables_ poster
was nailed to the wall behind Andrews next to a topographical map of the U.S. A
pot of tomato plants basked in the sun on the windowsill.

"Smoke?" he asked, his voice a deep baritone that was at odds with his
slight stature.

"No thanks," I said, not caring at all for the way Andrews's eyes barely
gave Sohrab a glance, or the way he didn't look at me when he spoke. He pulled
open a desk drawer and lit a cigarette from a half-empty pack. He also produced
a bottle of lotion from the same drawer. He looked at his tomato plants as he
rubbed lotion into his hands, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.
Then he closed the drawer, put his elbows on the desktop, and exhaled. "So," he
said, crinkling his gray eyes against the smoke, "tell me your story."

I felt like Jean Valjean sitting across from Javert. I reminded myself that I
was on American soil now, that this guy was on my side, that he got paid for
helping people like me. "I want to adopt this boy, take him back to the States with
me," I said.

"Tell me your story," he repeated, crushing a flake of ash on the neatly
arranged desk with his index finger, flicking it into the trash can.

I gave him the version I had worked out in my head since I'd hung up with
Soraya. I had gone into Afghanistan to bring back my half brother's son. I had
found the boy in squalid conditions, wasting away in an orphanage. I had paid
the orphanage director a sum of money and withdrawn the boy. Then I had
brought him to Pakistan.

"You are the boy's half uncle?"

'Yes.

He checked his watch. Leaned and turned the tomato plants on the sill.
"Know anyone who can attest to that?"

"Yes, but I don't know where he is now."

He turned to me and nodded. I tried to read his face and couldn't. I
wondered if he'd ever tried those little hands of his at poker.

"I assume getting your jaws wired isn't the latest fashion statement," he
said. We were in trouble, Sohrab and I, and I knew it then. I told him I'd gotten
mugged in Peshawar.

"Of course," he said. Cleared his throat. "Are you Muslim?"

"Yes."

"Practicing?"

"Yes." In truth, I didn't remember the last time I had laid my forehead to
the ground in prayer. Then I did remember: the day Dr. Amani gave Baba his
prognosis. I had kneeled on the prayer rug, remembering only fragments of
verses I had learned in school.

"Helps your case some, but not much," he said, scratching a spot on the
flawless part in his sandy hair.

"What do you mean?" I asked. I reached for Sohrab's hand, intertwined
my fingers with his. Sohrab looked uncertainly from me to Andrews.

"There's a long answer and I'm sure I'll end up giving it to you. You want
the short one first?"

"I guess," I said.

Andrews crushed his cigarette, his lips pursed. "Give it up."

"I'm sorry?"

"Your petition to adopt this young fellow. Give it up. That's my advice to

you."

Duly noted," I said. "Now, perhaps you'll tell me why.

"That means you want the long answer," he said, his voice impassive, not
reacting at all to my curt tone. He pressed his hands palm to palm, as if he were
kneeling before the Virgin Mary. "Let's assume the story you gave me is true,
though I'd bet my pension a good deal of it is either fabricated or omitted. Not
that I care, mind you. You're here, he's here, that's all that matters. Even so, your
petition faces significant obstacles, not the least of which is that this child is not
an orphan."

"Of course he is."

"Not legally he isn't."

"His parents were executed in the street. The neighbors saw it," I said,
glad we were speaking in English.

"You have death certificates?"

"Death certificates? This is Afghanistan we're talking about. Most people
there don't have birth certificates."

His glassy eyes didn't so much as blink. "I don't make the laws, sir. Your
outrage notwithstanding, you still need to prove the parents are deceased. The
boy has to be declared a legal orphan."

"But-

ii

"You wanted the long answer and I'm giving it to you. Your next problem
is that you need the cooperation of the child's country of origin. Now, that's
difficult under the best of circumstances, and, to quote you, this is Afghanistan
we're talking about. We don't have an American embassy in Kabul. That makes
things extremely complicated. Just about impossible."

What are you saying, that I should throw him back on the streets?" I said.

I didn't say that.

"He was sexually abused," I said, thinking of the bells around Sohrab's
ankles, the mascara on his eyes.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Andrews's mouth said. The way he was looking at
me, though, we might as well have been talking about the weather. "But that is
not going to make the INS issue this young fellow a visa."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that if you want to help, send money to a reputable relief
organization. Volunteer at a refugee camp. But at this point in time, we strongly
discourage U.S. citizens from attempting to adopt Afghan children."

I got up. "Come on, Sohrab," I said in Farsi. Sohrab slid next to me, rested
his head on my hip. I remembered the Polaroid of him and Hassan standing that
same way. "Can I ask you something, Mr. Andrews?"

'Yes.

"Do you have children?"

For the first time, he blinked.

"Well, do you? It's a simple question."

He was silent.

"I thought so," I said, taking Sohrab's hand. "They ought to put someone in
your chair who knows what it's like to want a child." I turned to go, Sohrab
trailing me.

Can I ask you a question?" Andrews called.

"Go ahead."

"Have you promised this child you'll take him with you?"

"What if I have?"

He shook his head. "It's a dangerous business, making promises to kids."
He sighed and opened his desk drawer again. "You mean to pursue this?" he said,
rummaging through papers.

"I mean to pursue this."

He produced a business card. "Then I advise you to get a good
immigration lawyer. Omar Faisal works here in Islamabad. You can tell him I
sent you."

I took the card from him. "Thanks," I muttered.

"Good luck," he said. As we exited the room, I glanced over my shoulder.
Andrews was standing in a rectangle of sunlight, absently staring out the
window, his hands turning the potted tomato plants toward the sun, petting
them lovingly.

"TAKE CARE," the secretary said as we passed her desk.

"Your boss could use some manners," I said. I expected her to roll her
eyes, maybe nod in that "I know, everybody says that," kind of way. Instead, she
lowered her voice. "Poor Ray. He hasn't been the same since his daughter died."

I raised an eyebrow.

Suicide," she whispered.

"I know it sounds crazy, but I find myself wondering what his favorite _qurma.
will be, or his favorite subject in school. I picture myself helping him with
homework..." She laughed. In the bathroom, the water had stopped running. I
could hear Sohrab in there, shifting in the tub, spilling water over the sides.

"You're going to be great," I said.

"Oh, I almost forgot! I called Kaka Sharif."

I remembered him reciting a poem at our nika from a scrap of hotel
stationery paper. His son had held the Koran over our heads as Soraya and I had
walked toward the stage, smiling at the flashing cameras. "What did he say?"

"Well, he's going to stir the pot for us. He'll call some of his INS buddies,"
she said.

"That's really great news," I said. "I can't wait for you to see Sohrab."

"I can't wait to see you," she said.

I hung up smiling.

ON THE TAXI RIDE back to the hotel, Sohrab rested his head on the window, kept
staring at the passing buildings, the rows of gum trees. His breath fogged the
glass, cleared, fogged it again. I waited for him to ask me about the meeting but
he didn't.

ON THE OTHER SIDE of the closed bathroom door the water was running. Since
the day we'd checked into the hotel, Sohrab took a long bath every night before
bed. In Kabul, hot running water had been like fathers, a rare commodity. Now
Sohrab spent almost an hour a night in the bath, soaking in the soapy water,
scrubbing. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I called Soraya. I glanced at the thin line
of light under the bathroom door. Do you feel clean yet, Sohrab? I passed on to
Soraya what Raymond Andrews had told me. "So what do you think?" I said.

"We have to think he's wrong." She told me she had called a few adoption
agencies that arranged international adoptions. She hadn't yet found one that
would consider doing an Afghan adoption, but she was still looking.

"How are your parents taking the news?"

"Madar is happy for us. You know how she feels about you, Amir, you can
do no wrong in her eyes. Padar... well, as always, he's a little harder to read. He's
not saying much."

"And you? Are you happy?"

I heard her shifting the receiver to her other hand. "I think we'll be good
for your nephew, but maybe that little boy will be good for us too."

"I was thinking the same thing."

Sohrab emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later. He had barely
said a dozen words since the meeting with Raymond Andrews and my attempts
at conversation had only met with a nod or a monosyllabic reply. He climbed into
bed, pulled the blanket to his chin. Within minutes, he was snoring.

I wiped a circle on the fogged-up mirror and shaved with one of the
hotel's old-fashioned razors, the type that opened and you slid the blade in. Then

I took my own bath, lay there until the steaming hot water turned cold and my
skin shriveled up. I lay there drifting, wondering, imagining...

OMAR FAISAL WAS CHUBBY, dark, had dimpled cheeks, black button eyes, and
an affable, gap-toothed smile. His thinning gray hair was tied back in a ponytail.
He wore a brown corduroy suit with leather elbow patches and carried a worn,
overstuffed briefcase. The handle was missing, so he clutched the briefcase to his
chest. He was the sort of fellow who started a lot of sentences with a laugh and
an unnecessary apology, like I'm sorry, I'll be there at five. Laugh. When I had
called him, he had insisted on coming out to meet us. "I'm sorry, the cabbies in
this town are sharks," he said in perfect English, without a trace of an accent.
"They smell a foreigner, they triple their fares."

He pushed through the door, all smiles and apologies, wheezing a little
and sweating. He wiped his brow with a handkerchief and opened his briefcase,
rummaged in it for a notepad and apologized for the sheets of paper that spilled
on the bed. Sitting cross-legged on his bed, Sohrab kept one eye on the muted
television, the other on the harried lawyer. I had told him in the morning that
Faisal would be coming and he had nodded, almost asked something, and had
just gone on watching a show with talking animals.

"Here we are," Faisal said, flipping open a yellow legal notepad. "I hope
my children take after their mother when it comes to organization. I'm sorry,
probably not the sort of thing you want to hear from your prospective lawyer,
heh?" He laughed.

"Well, Raymond Andrews thinks highly of you."

"He did?"

"Oh yes.... So you're familiar with my situation?"

Faisal dabbed at the sweat beads above his lips. "I'm familiar with the
version of the situation you gave Mr. Andrews," he said. His cheeks dimpled with
a coy smile. He turned to Sohrab. "This must be the young man who's causing all
the trouble," he said in Farsi.

"This is Sohrab," I said. "Sohrab, this is Mr. Faisal, the lawyer I told you

about."

Sohrab slid down the side of his bed and shook hands with Omar Faisal.
"Salaam alaykum," he said in a low voice.

"Alaykum salaam, Sohrab," Faisal said. "Did you know you are named
after a great warrior?"

Sohrab nodded. Climbed back onto his bed and lay on his side to watch
TV.

"I didn't know you spoke Farsi so well," I said in English. "Did you grow
up in Kabul?"

"No, I was born in Karachi. But I did live in Kabul for a number of years.
Shar-e-Nau, near the Haji Yaghoub Mosque," Faisal said. "I grew up in Berkeley,
actually. My father opened a music store there in the late sixties. Free love,
headbands, tie-dyed shirts, you name it." He leaned forward. "1 was at
Woodstock."

"Groovy," I said, and Faisal laughed so hard he started sweating all over
again. "Anyway," I continued, "what I told Mr. Andrews was pretty much it, save
for a thing or two. Or maybe three. I'll give you the uncensored version."

He licked a finger and flipped to a blank page, uncapped his pen. "I'd
appreciate that, Amir. And why don't we just keep it in English from here on
out?"

"Fine."

I told him everything that had happened. Told him about my meeting with
Rahim Khan, the trek to Kabul, the orphanage, the stoning at Ghazi Stadium.

"God," he whispered. "I'm sorry, I have such fond memories of Kabul.
Hard to believe it's the same place you're telling me about."

"Have you been there lately?"

"God no."

"It's not Berkeley, I'll tell you that," I said.

"Go on."

I told him the rest, the meeting with Assef, the fight, Sohrab and his
slingshot, our escape back to Pakistan. When I was done, he scribbled a few
notes, breathed in deeply, and gave me a sober look. "Well, Amir, you've got a
tough battle ahead of you."

"One I can win?"

He capped his pen. "At the risk of sounding like Raymond Andrews, it's
not likely. Not impossible, but hardly likely." Gone was the affable smile, the
playful look in his eyes.

"But it's kids like Sohrab who need a home the most," I said. "These rules
and regulations don't make any sense to me."

"You're preaching to the choir, Amir," he said. "But the fact is, take current
immigration laws, adoption agency policies, and the political situation in
Afghanistan, and the deck is stacked against you."

"I don't get it," I said. I wanted to hit something. "I mean, I get it but I don't

get it.

Omar nodded, his brow furrowed. "Well, it's like this. In the aftermath of a
disaster, whether it be natural or man-made--and the Taliban are a disaster,
Amir, believe me--it's always difficult to ascertain that a child is an orphan. Kids
get displaced in refugee camps, or parents just abandon them because they can't
take care of them. Happens all the time. So the INS won't grant a visa unless it's
clear the child meets the definition of an eligible orphan. I'm sorry, I know it
sounds ridiculous, but you need death certificates."

"You've been to Afghanistan," I said. "You know how improbable that is."

"I know," he said. "But let's suppose it's clear that the child has no
surviving parent. Even then, the INS thinks it's good adoption practice to place
the child with someone in his own country so his heritage can be preserved."

"What heritage?" I said. "The Taliban have destroyed what heritage
Afghans had.

You saw what they did to the giant Buddhas in Bamiyan."

"I'm sorry, I'm telling you how the INS works, Amir," Omar said, touching
my arm. He glanced at Sohrab and smiled. Turned back to me. "Now, a child has
to be legally adopted according to the laws and regulations of his own country.
But when you have a country in turmoil, say a country like Afghanistan,
government offices are busy with emergencies, and processing adoptions won't
be a top priority."

I sighed and rubbed my eyes. A pounding headache was settling in just
behind them.

"But let's suppose that somehow Afghanistan gets its act together," Omar
said, crossing his arms on his protruding belly. "It still may not permit this
adoption. In fact, even the more moderate Muslim nations are hesitant with
adoptions because in many of those countries, Islamic law, Shari'a, doesn't
recognize adoption."

"You're telling me to give it up?" I asked, pressing my palm to my
forehead.

"I grew up in the U.S., Amir. If America taught me anything, it's that
quitting is right up there with pissing in the Girl Scouts' lemonade jar. But, as
your lawyer, I have to give you the facts," he said. "Finally, adoption agencies
routinely send staff members to evaluate the child's milieu, and no reasonable
agency is going to send an agent to Afghanistan."

I looked at Sohrab sitting on the bed, watching TV, watching us. He was
sitting the way his father used to, chin resting on one knee.

"I'm his half uncle, does that count for anything?"

"It does if you can prove it. I'm sorry, do you have any papers or anyone
who can support you?"

"No papers," I said, in a tired voice. "No one knew about it. Sohrab didn't
know until I told him, and I myself didn't find out until recently. The only other
person who knows is gone, maybe dead."

"What are my options, Omar?"

"I'll be frank. You don't have a lot of them."

"Well, Jesus, what can I do?"

Omar breathed in, tapped his chin with the pen, let his breath out. "You
could still file an orphan petition, hope for the best. You could do an independent
adoption. That means you'd have to live with Sohrab here in Pakistan, day in and
day out, for the next two years. You could seek asylum on his behalf. That's a
lengthy process and you'd have to prove political persecution. You could request
a humanitarian visa. That's at the discretion of the attorney general and it's not
easily given." He paused. "There is another option, probably your best shot."

What?" I said, leaning forward.

"You could relinquish him to an orphanage here, then file an orphan
petition.

Start your 1-600 form and your home study while he's in a safe place."

"What are those?"

"I'm sorry, the 1-600 is an INS formality. The home study is done by the
adoption agency you choose," Omar said. "It's, you know, to make sure you and
your wife aren't raving lunatics."

"I don't want to do that," I said, looking again at Sohrab. "I promised him I
wouldn't send him back to an orphanage."

"Like I said, it may be your best shot."

We talked a while longer. Then I walked him out to his car, an old VW Bug.
The sun was setting on Islamabad by then, a flaming red nimbus in the west. I
watched the car tilt under Omar's weight as he somehow managed to slide in
behind the wheel. He rolled down the window. "Amir?"

"Yes."

"I meant to tell you in there, about what you're trying to do? I think it's
pretty great."

He waved as he pulled away. Standing outside the hotel room and waving
back, I wished Soraya could be there with me.

SOHRAB HAD TURNED OFF THE TV when 1 went back into the room. I sat on the
edge of my bed, asked him to sit next to me. "Mr. Faisal thinks there is a way 1 can
take you to America with me," I said.

"He does?" Sohrab said, smiling faintly for the first time in days. "When
can we go?"

"Well, that's the thing. It might take a little while. But he said it can be
done and he's going to help us." 1 put my hand on the back of his neck. From
outside, the call to prayer blared through the streets.

"How long?" Sohrab asked.

"I don't know. A while."

Sohrab shrugged and smiled, wider this time. "I don't mind. I can wait. It's
like the sour apples."

"Sour apples?"

"One time, when I was really little, I climbed a tree and ate these green,
sour apples. My stomach swelled and became hard like a drum, it hurt a lot.
Mother said that if I'd just waited for the apples to ripen, I wouldn't have become
sick. So now, whenever I really want something, I try to remember what she said
about the apples."

"Sour apples," I said. "_Mashallah_, you're just about the smartest little
guy I've ever met, Sohrab jan." His ears reddened with a blush.

"Will you take me to that red bridge? The one with the fog?" he said.

Absolutely," I said. "Absolutely.

"And we'll drive up those streets, the ones where all you see is the hood of
the car and the sky?"

"Every single one of them," I said. My eyes stung with tears and I blinked
them away.

"Is English hard to learn?"

"I say, within a year, you'll speak it as well as Farsi."

"Really?"

"Yes." I placed a finger under his chin, turned his face up to mine. "There
is one other thing, Sohrab."

"What?"

"Well, Mr. Faisal thinks that it would really help if we could... if we could
ask you to stay in a home for kids for a while."

"Home for kids?" he said, his smile fading. "You mean an orphanage?"

"It would only be for a little while."

"No," he said. "No, please."

"Sohrab, it would be for just a little while. I promise."

"You promised you'd never put me in one of those places, Amir agha," he

said.

His voice was breaking, tears pooling in his eyes. 1 felt like a prick.

"This is different. It would be here, in Islamabad, not in Kabul. And I'd
visit you all the time until we can get you out and take you to America."

"Please! Please, no!" he croaked. "I'm scared of that place. They'll hurt me!
I don't want to go."

"No one is going to hurt you. Not ever again."

"Yes they will! They always say they won't but they lie. They lie! Please,

God!"

I wiped the tear streaking down his cheek with my thumb. "Sour apples,
remember? It's just like the sour apples," I said softly.

"No it's not. Not that place. God, oh God. Please, no!" He was trembling,
snot and tears mixing on his face.

"Shhh." I pulled him close, wrapped my arms around his shaking little
body. "Shhh. It'll be all right. We'll go home together. You'll see, it'll be all right."

His voice was muffled against my chest, but I heard the panic in it. "Please
promise you won't! Oh God, Amir agha! Please promise you won't!"

How could I promise? I held him against me, held him tightly, and rocked
back and forth. He wept into my shirt until his tears dried, until his shaking
stopped and his frantic pleas dwindled to indecipherable mumbles. I waited,
rocked him until his breathing slowed and his body slackened. I remembered
something I had read somewhere a long time ago: That's how children deal with
terror. They fall asleep.

I carried him to his bed, set him down. Then I lay in my own bed, looking
out the window at the purple sky over Islamabad.

THE SKY WAS A DEEP BLACK when the phone jolted me from sleep. I rubbed my
eyes and turned on the bedside lamp. It was a little past 10:30 P.M.; I'd been
sleeping for almost three hours. I picked up the phone. "Hello?"

"Call from America." Mr. Fayyaz's bored voice.

"Thank you," I said. The bathroom light was on; Sohrab was taking his
nightly bath. A couple of clicks and then Soraya: "Salaam!" She sounded excited.

"How did the meeting go with the lawyer?"

I told her what Omar Faisal had suggested. "Well, you can forget about it,"
she said. "We won't have to do that."

I sat up. "Rawsti? Why, what's up?"

"I heard back from Kaka Sharif. He said the key was getting Sohrab into
the country. Once he's in, there are ways of keeping him here. So he made a few
calls to his INS friends. He called me back tonight and said he was almost certain
he could get Sohrab a humanitarian visa."

"No kidding?" I said. "Oh thank God! Good ol' Sharif jan!"

"I know. Anyway, we'll serve as the sponsors. It should all happen pretty
quickly. He said the visa would be good for a year, plenty of time to apply for an
adoption petition."

It's really going to happen, Soraya, huh?

"It looks like it," she said. She sounded happy. I told her I loved her and
she said she loved me back. I hung up.

"Sohrab!" I called, rising from my bed. "I have great news." I knocked on
the bathroom door. "Sohrab! Soraya jan just called from California. We won't
have to put you in the orphanage, Sohrab. We're going to America, you and I. Did
you hear me? We're going to America!"

I pushed the door open. Stepped into the bathroom.

Suddenly I was on my knees, screaming. Screaming through my clenched

teeth.

Screaming until I thought my throat would rip and my chest explode.

Later, they said I was still screaming when the ambulance arrived.

TWENTY-FIVE

They won't let me in.

I see them wheel him through a set of double doors and I follow. I burst
through the doors, the smell of iodine and peroxide hits me, but all I have time to
see is two men wearing surgical caps and a woman in green huddling over a
gurney. A white sheet spills over the side of the gurney and brushes against
grimy checkered tiles. A pair of small, bloody feet poke out from under the sheet
and I see that the big toenail on the left foot is chipped. Then a tall, thickset man

in blue presses his palm against my chest and he's pushing me back out through
the doors, his wedding band cold on my skin. I shove forward and I curse him,
but he says you cannot be here, he says it in English, his voice polite but firm.
"You must wait," he says, leading me back to the waiting area, and now the
double doors swing shut behind him with a sigh and all I see is the top of the
men's surgical caps through the doors' narrow rectangular windows.

He leaves me in a wide, windowless corridor crammed with people sitting
on metallic folding chairs set along the walls, others on the thin frayed carpet. 1
want to scream again, and I remember the last time I felt this way, riding with
Baba in the tank of the fuel truck, buried in the dark with the other refugees. I
want to tear myself from this place, from this reality rise up like a cloud and float
away, melt into this humid summer night and dissolve somewhere far, over the
hills. But I am here, my legs blocks of concrete, my lungs empty of air, my throat
burning. There will be no floating away. There will be no other reality tonight. I
close my eyes and my nostrils fill with the smells of the corridor, sweat and
ammonia, rubbing alcohol and curry. On the ceiling, moths fling themselves at
the dull gray light tubes running the length of the corridor and I hear the papery
flapping of their wings. I hear chatter, muted sobbing, sniffling, someone
moaning, someone else sighing, elevator doors opening with a bing, the operator
paging someone in Urdu.

I open my eyes again and I know what I have to do. 1 look around, my
heart a jackhammer in my chest, blood thudding in my ears. There is a dark little
supply room to my left. In it, I find what I need. It will do. I grab a white bed sheet
from the pile of folded linens and carry it back to the corridor. I see a nurse
talking to a policeman near the restroom. I take the nurse's elbow and pull, I
want to know which way is west. She doesn't understand and the lines on her
face deepen when she frowns. My throat aches and my eyes sting with sweat,
each breath is like inhaling fire, and I think I am weeping. I ask again. I beg. The
policeman is the one who points.

I throw my makeshift _jai-namaz_, my prayer rug, on the floor and I get on
my knees, lower my forehead to the ground, my tears soaking through the sheet.

I bow to the west. Then I remember I haven't prayed for over fifteen years. I have
long forgotten the words. But it doesn't matter, I will utter those few words I still
remember: ??La iflaha ii** Allah, Muhammad u rasul ullah. There is no God but
Allah and Muhammad is His messenger. I see now that Baba was wrong, there is
a God, there always had been. I see Him here, in the eyes of the people in this
corridor of desperation. This is the real house of God, this is where those who
have lost God will find Him, not the white masjid with its bright diamond lights
and towering minarets. There is a God, there has to be, and now I will pray, I will
pray that He forgive that I have neglected Him all of these years, forgive that I
have betrayed, lied, and sinned with impunity only to turn to Him now in my
hour of need, I pray that He is as merciful, benevolent, and gracious as His book

says He is. I bow to the west and kiss the ground and promise that I will do
_zakat_, I will do _namaz_, I will fast during Ramadan and when Ramadan has
passed I will go on fasting, I will commit to memory every last word of His holy
book, and I will set on a pilgrimage to that sweltering city in the desert and bow
before the Ka'bah too. I will do all of this and I will think of Him every day from
this day on if He only grants me this one wish: My hands are stained with
Hassan's blood; I pray God doesn't let them get stained with the blood of his boy
too.

I hear a whimpering and realize it is mine, my lips are salty with the tears
trickling down my face. I feel the eyes of everyone in this corridor on me and still
1 bow to the west. 1 pray. I pray that my sins have not caught up with me the way
I'd always feared they would.

A STARLESS, BLACK NIGHT falls over Islamabad. It's a few hours later and I am
sitting now on the floor of a tiny lounge off the corridor that leads to the
emergency ward. Before me is a dull brown coffee table cluttered with
newspapers and dog-eared magazines-an April 1996 issue of Time; a Pakistani
newspaper showing the face of a young boy who was hit and killed by a train the
week before; an entertainment magazine with smiling Hollywood actors on its
glossy cover. There is an old woman wearing a jade green shalwar-kameez and a
crocheted shawl nodding off in a wheelchair across from me. Every once in a
while, she stirs awake and mutters a prayer in Arabic. I wonder tiredly whose
prayers will be heard tonight, hers or mine. I picture Sohrab's face, the pointed
meaty chin, his small seashell ears, his slanting bamboo-leaf eyes so much like
his father's. A sorrow as black as the night outside invades me, and I feel my
throat clamping.

I need air.

I get up and open the windows. The air coming through the screen is
musty and hot-it smells of overripe dates and dung. I force it into my lungs in
big heaps, but it doesn't clear the clamping feeling in my chest. I drop back on the
floor. I pick up the Time magazine and flip through the pages. But I can't read,
can't focus on anything. So I toss it on the table and go back to staring at the
zigzagging pattern of the cracks on the cement floor, at the cobwebs on the
ceiling where the walls meet, at the dead flies littering the windowsill. Mostly, I
stare at the clock on the wall. It's just past 4 A.M. and I have been shut out of the
room with the swinging double doors for over five hours now. I still haven't
heard any news.

The floor beneath me begins to feel like part of my body, and my
breathing is growing heavier, slower. I want to sleep, shut my eyes and lie my
head down on this cold, dusty floor. Drift off. When I wake up, maybe I will
discover that everything I saw in the hotel bathroom was part of a dream: the
water drops dripping from the faucet and landing with a plink into the bloody
bath water; the left arm dangling over the side of the tub, the blood-soaked razor
sitting on the toilet tank-the same razor I had shaved with the day before-and
his eyes, still half open but light less. That more than anything. I want to forget
the eyes.

Soon, sleep comes and I let it take me. 1 dream of things I can't remember

later.

SOMEONE IS TAPPING ME on the shoulder. I open my eyes. There is a man
kneeling beside me. He is wearing a cap like the men behind the swinging double
doors and a paper surgical mask over his mouth-my heart sinks when I see a
drop of blood on the mask. He has taped a picture of a doe-eyed little girl to his
beeper. He unsnaps his mask and I'm glad I don't have to look at Sohrab's blood
anymore. His skin is dark like the imported Swiss chocolate Hassan and I used to
buy from the bazaar in Shar-e-Nau; he has thinning hair and hazel eyes topped
with curved eyelashes. In a British accent, he tells me his name is Dr. Nawaz, and
suddenly I want to be away from this man, because I don't think I can bear to
hear what he has come to tell me. He says the boy had cut himself deeply and had
lost a great deal of blood and my mouth begins to mutter that prayer again: La
illaha il Allah, Muhammad u rasul ullah.

They had to transfuse several units of red cells-How will I tell Soraya?
Twice, they had to revive him-I will do _namaz_, I will do _zakat_.

They would have lost him if his heart hadn't been young and strong-I will

fast.

He is alive.

Dr. Nawaz smiles. It takes me a moment to register what he has just said.
Then he says more but I don't hear him. Because I have taken his hands and I
have brought them up to my face. I weep my relief into this stranger's small,
meaty hands and he says nothing now. He waits.

THE INTENSIVE CARE UNIT is L-shaped and dim, a jumble of bleeping monitors
and whirring machines. Dr. Nawaz leads me between two rows of beds separated
by white plastic curtains. Sohrab's bed is the last one around the corner, the one
nearest the nurses' station where two nurses in green surgical scrubs are jotting
notes on clipboards, chatting in low voices. On the silent ride up the elevator
with Dr. Nawaz, I had thought I'd weep again when I saw Sohrab. But when I sit
on the chair at the foot of his bed, looking at his white face through the tangle of
gleaming plastic tubes and IV lines, I am dry-eyed. Watching his chest rise and
fall to the rhythm of the hissing ventilator, a curious numbness washes over me,
the same numbness a man might feel seconds after he has swerved his car and
barely avoided a head-on collision.

I doze off, and, when I wake up, I see the sun rising in a buttermilk sky
through the window next to the nurses' station. The light slants into the room,
aims my shadow toward Sohrab. He hasn't moved.

"You'd do well to get some sleep," a nurse says to me. I don't recognize
her-there must have been a shift change while I'd napped. She takes me to
another lounge, this one just outside the ICU. It's empty. She hands me a pillow
and a hospital-issue blanket. I thank her and lie on the vinyl sofa in the corner of
the lounge. I fall asleep almost immediately.

I dream I am back in the lounge downstairs. Dr. Nawaz walks in and I rise
to meet him. He takes off his paper mask, his hands suddenly whiter than I
remembered, his nails manicured, he has neatly parted hair, and I see he is not
Dr. Nawaz at all but Raymond Andrews, the little embassy man with the potted
tomatoes. Andrews cocks his head. Narrows his eyes.

IN THE DAYTIME, the hospital was a maze of teeming, angled hallways, a blur of
blazing-white overhead fluorescence. I came to know its layout, came to know

that the fourth-floor button in the east wing elevator didn't light up, that the
door to the men's room on that same floor was jammed and you had to ram your
shoulder into it to open it. I came to know that hospital life has a rhythm, the
flurry of activity just before the morning shift change, the midday hustle, the
stillness and quiet of the late-night hours interrupted occasionally by a blur of
doctors and nurses rushing to revive someone. I kept vigil at Sohrab's bedside in
the daytime and wandered through the hospital's serpentine corridors at night,
listening to my shoe heels clicking on the tiles, thinking of what I would say to
Sohrab when he woke up. I'd end up back in the ICU, by the whooshing ventilator
beside his bed, and I'd be no closer to knowing.

After three days in the ICU, they withdrew the breathing tube and
transferred him to a ground-level bed. I wasn't there when they moved him. I
had gone back to the hotel that night to get some sleep and ended up tossing
around in bed all night. In the morning, I tried to not look at the bathtub. It was
clean now, someone had wiped off the blood, spread new floor mats on the floor,
and scrubbed the walls. But I couldn't stop myself from sitting on its cool,
porcelain edge. I pictured Sohrab filling it with warm water. Saw him undressing.
Saw him twisting the razor handle and opening the twin safety latches on the
head, sliding the blade out, holding it between his thumb and forefinger. I
pictured him lowering himself into the water, lying there for a while, his eyes
closed. I wondered what his last thought had been as he had raised the blade and
brought it down.

I was exiting the lobby when the hotel manager, Mr. Fayyaz, caught up
with me. "I am very sorry for you," he said, "but I am asking for you to leave my
hotel, please. This is bad for my business, very bad."

I told him I understood and I checked out. He didn't charge me for the
three days I'd spent at the hospital. Waiting for a cab outside the hotel lobby, I
thought about what Mr. Fayyaz had said to me that night we'd gone looking for
Sohrab: The thing about you Afghanis is that... well, you people are a little
reckless. I had laughed at him, but now I wondered. Had I actually gone to sleep
after I had given Sohrab the news he feared most? When I got in the cab, I asked
the driver if he knew any Persian bookstores. He said there was one a couple of
kilometers south. We stopped there on the way to the hospital.

SOHRAB'S NEW ROOM had cream-colored walls, chipped, dark gray moldings,
and glazed tiles that might have once been white. He shared the room with a
teenaged Punjabi boy who, I later learned from one of the nurses, had broken his

leg when he had slipped off the roof of a moving bus. His leg was in a cast, raised
and held by tongs strapped to several weights.

Sohrab's bed was next to the window, the lower half lit by the late-
morning sunlight streaming through the rectangular panes. A uniformed security
guard was standing at the window, munching on cooked watermelon seeds-
Sohrab was under twenty-four hours-a-day suicide watch. Hospital protocol, Dr.
Nawaz had informed me. The guard tipped his hat when he saw me and left the
room.

Sohrab was wearing short-sleeved hospital pajamas and lying on his back,
blanket pulled to his chest, face turned to the window. I thought he was sleeping,
but when I scooted a chair up to his bed his eyelids fluttered and opened. He
looked at me, then looked away. He was so pale, even with all the blood they had
given him, and there was a large purple bruise in the crease of his right arm.

"How are you?" I said.

He didn't answer. He was looking through the window at a fenced-in
sandbox and swing set in the hospital garden. There was an arch-shaped trellis
near the playground, in the shadow of a row of hibiscus trees, a few green vines
climbing up the timber lattice. A handful of kids were playing with buckets and
pails in the sand box. The sky was a cloudless blue that day, and I saw a tiny jet
leaving behind twin white trails. I turned back to Sohrab. "I spoke to Dr. Nawaz a
few minutes ago and he thinks you'll be discharged in a couple of days. That's
good news, nay?"

Again I was met by silence. The Punjabi boy at the other end of the room
stirred in his sleep and moaned something. "I like your room," I said, trying not
to look at Sohrab's bandaged wrists. "It's bright, and you have a view." Silence. A
few more awkward minutes passed, and a light sweat formed on my brow, my
upper lip. I pointed to the untouched bowl of green pea aush on his nightstand,
the unused plastic spoon. "You should try to eat something. Gain your quwat
back, your strength. Do you want me to help you?"

He held my glance, then looked away, his face set like stone. His eyes were
still lightless, I saw, vacant, the way I had found them when I had pulled him out
of the bathtub. I reached into the paper bag between my feet and took out the
used copy of the Shah Namah I had bought at the Persian bookstore. I turned the
cover so it faced Sohrab. "I used to read this to your father when we were
children. We'd go up the hill by our house and sit beneath the pomegranate..." I

trailed off. Sohrab was looking through the window again. I forced a smile. "Your
father's favorite was the story of Rostam and Sohrab and that's how you got your
name, I know you know that." I paused, feeling a bit like an idiot. "Any way, he
said in his letter that it was your favorite too, so I thought I'd read you some of it.
Would you like that?"

Sohrab closed his eyes. Covered them with his arm, the one with the

bruise.

I flipped to the page I had bent in the taxicab. "Here we go," I said,
wondering for the first time what thoughts had passed through Hassan's head
when he had finally read the _Shahnamah_ for himself and discovered that I had
deceived him all those times. I cleared my throat and read. "Give ear unto the
combat of Sohrab against Rostam, though it be a tale replete with tears," I began.
"It came about that on a certain day Rostam rose from his couch and his mind
was filled with forebodings. He bethought him..." I read him most of chapter 1, up
to the part where the young warrior Sohrab comes to his mother, Tahmineh, the
princess of Samengan, and demands to know the identity of his father. I closed
the book. "Do you want me to go on? There are battles coming up, remember?
Sohrab leading his army to the White Castle in Iran? Should I read on?"

He shook his head slowly. I dropped the book back in the paper bag.
"That's fine," I said, encouraged that he had responded at all. "Maybe we can
continue tomorrow. How do you feel?"

Sohrab's mouth opened and a hoarse sound came out. Dr. Nawaz had told
me that would happen, on account of the breathing tube they had slid through
his vocal cords. He licked his lips and tried again. "Tired."

"I know. Dr. Nawaz said that was to be expected--" He was shaking his

head.

"What, Sohrab?"

He winced when he spoke again in that husky voice, barely above a
whisper.

Tired of everything.

I sighed and slumped in my chair. There was a band of sunlight on the bed
between us, and, for just a moment, the ashen gray face looking at me from the
other side of it was a dead ringer for Hassan's, not the Hassan I played marbles
with until the mullah belted out the evening azan and Ah called us home, not the
Hassan I chased down our hill as the sun dipped behind clay rooftops in the west,
but the Hassan I saw alive for the last time, dragging his belongings behind Ali in
a warm summer downpour, stuffing them in the trunk of Baba's car while I
watched through the rain-soaked window of my room.

He gave a slow shake of his head. "Tired of everything," he repeated.

"What can I do, Sohrab? Please tell me."

"I want-" he began. He winced again and brought his hand to his throat as
if to clear whatever was blocking his voice. My eyes were drawn again to his
wrist wrapped tightly with white gauze bandages. "I want my old life back," he
breathed.

"Oh, Sohrab."

"I want Father and Mother jan. I want Sasa. I want to play with Rahim
Khan sahib in the garden. I want to live in our house again." He dragged his
forearm across his eyes. "I want my old life back."

I didn't know what to say, where to look, so I gazed down at my hands.
Your old life, I thought. My old life too. I played in the same yard, Sohrab. I lived
in the same house. But the grass is dead and a stranger's jeep is parked in the
driveway of our house, pissing oil all over the asphalt. Our old life is gone,
Sohrab, and everyone in it is either dead or dying. It's just you and me now. Just
you and me.

"I can't give you that," I said.

I wish you hadn't-

Please don't say that.

"--wish you hadn't... I wish you had left me in the water."

"Don't ever say that, Sohrab," I said, leaning forward. "I can't bear to hear
you talk like that." I touched his shoulder and he flinched. Drew away. I dropped
my hand, remembering ruefully how in the last days before I'd broken my
promise to him he had finally become at ease with my touch. "Sohrab, I can't give
you your old life back, I wish to God I could. But I can take you with me. That was
what I was coming in the bathroom to tell you. You have a visa to go to America,
to live with me and my wife. It's true. I promise."

He sighed through his nose and closed his eyes. I wished I hadn't said
those last two words. "You know, I've done a lot of things I regret in my life," I
said, "and maybe none more than going back on the promise I made you. But that
will never happen again, and I am so very profoundly sorry. I ask for your
bakhshesh, your forgiveness. Can you do that? Can you forgive me? Can you
believe me?" I dropped my voice. "Will you come with me?"

As I waited for his reply, my mind flashed back to a winter day from long
ago, Hassan and I sitting on the snow beneath a leafless sour cherry tree. I had
played a cruel game with Hassan that day, toyed with him, asked him if he would
chew dirt to prove his loyalty to me. Now I was the one under the microscope,
the one who had to prove my worthiness. I deserved this.

Sohrab rolled to his side, his back to me. He didn't say anything for a long
time. And then, just as I thought he might have drifted to sleep, he said with a
croak, "I am so khasta." So very tired. I sat by his bed until he fell asleep.
Something was lost between Sohrab and me. Until my meeting with the lawyer,
Omar Faisal, a light of hope had begun to enter Sohrab's eyes like a timid guest.
Now the light was gone, the guest had fled, and I wondered when it would dare
return. I wondered how long before Sohrab smiled again. How long before he
trusted me. If ever.

So I left the room and went looking for another hotel, unaware that
almost a year would pass before I would hear Sohrab speak another word.

IN THE END, Sohrab never accepted my offer. Nor did he decline it. But he knew
that when the bandages were removed and the hospital garments returned, he
was just another homeless Hazara orphan. What choice did he have? Where
could he go? So what I took as a yes from him was in actuality more of a quiet
surrender, not so much an acceptance as an act of relinquishment by one too
weary to decide, and far too tired to believe. What he yearned for was his old life.
What he got was me and America. Not that it was such a bad fate, everything
considered, but I couldn't tell him that. Perspective was a luxury when your head
was constantly buzzing with a swarm of demons.

And so it was that, about a week later, we crossed a strip of warm, black
tarmac and I brought Hassan's son from Afghanistan to America, lifting him from
the certainty of turmoil and dropping him in a turmoil of uncertainty.

ONE DAY, maybe around 1983 or 1984,1 was at a video store in Fremont. I was
standing in the Westerns section when a guy next to me, sipping Coke from a 7-
Eleven cup, pointed to _The Magnificent Seven_ and asked me if I had seen it.
"Yes, thirteen times," I said. "Charles Bronson dies in it, so do James Coburn and
Robert Vaughn." He gave me a pinch-faced look, as if I had just spat in his soda.
"Thanks a lot, man," he said, shaking his head and muttering something as he
walked away. That was when I learned that, in America, you don't reveal the
ending of the movie, and if you do, you will be scorned and made to apologize
profusely for having committed the sin of Spoiling the End.

In Afghanistan, the ending was all that mattered. When Hassan and I came
home after watching a Hindi film at Cinema Zainab, what Ali, Rahim Khan, Baba,
or the myriad of Baba's friends-second and third cousins milling in and out of
the house-wanted to know was this: Did the Girl in the film find happiness? Did
the bacheh film, the Guy in the film, become katnyab and fulfill his dreams, or
was he nah-kam, doomed to wallow in failure? Was there happiness at the end,
they wanted to know.

If someone were to ask me today whether the story of Hassan, Sohrab,
and me ends with happiness, I wouldn't know what to say.

Does anybody's? After all, life is not a Hindi movie. Zendagi migzara,
Afghans like to say: Life goes on, unmindful of beginning, end, kamyab, nah-kam,
crisis or catharsis, moving forward like a slow, dusty caravan of kochis.

I wouldn't know how to answer that question. Despite the matter of last
Sunday's tiny miracle.

WE ARRIVED HOME about seven months ago, on a warm day in August 2001.
Soraya picked us up at the airport. I had never been away from Soraya for so
long, and when she locked her arms around my neck, when I smelled apples in
her hair, I realized how much I had missed her. "You're still the morning sun to
my yelda," I whispered.

"What?"

"Never mind." I kissed her ear.

After, she knelt to eye level with Sohrab. She took his hand and smiled at

him.

"Salaam, Sohrab jan, I'm your Khala Soraya. We've all been waiting for

you."

Looking at her smiling at Sohrab, her eyes tearing over a little, I had a
glimpse of the mother she might have been, had her own womb not betrayed her.

Sohrab shifted on his feet and looked away.

SORAYA HAD TURNED THE STUDY upstairs into a bedroom for Sohrab. She led
him in and he sat on the edge of the bed. The sheets showed brightly colored
kites flying in indigo blue skies. She had made inscriptions on the wall by the
closet, feet and inches to measure a child's growing height. At the foot of the bed,
I saw a wicker basket stuffed with books, a locomotive, a water color set.

Sohrab was wearing the plain white T-shirt and new denims I had bought
him in Islamabad just before we'd left-the shirt hung loosely over his bony,
slumping shoulders. The color still hadn't seeped back into his face, save for the
halo of dark circles around his eyes. He was looking at us now in the impassive
way he looked at the plates of boiled rice the hospital orderly placed before him.

Soraya asked if he liked his room and I noticed that she was trying to
avoid looking at his wrists and that her eyes kept swaying back to those jagged
pink lines. Sohrab lowered his head. Hid his hands under his thighs and said
nothing.

Then he simply lay his head on the pillow. Less than five minutes later,
Soraya and I watching from the doorway, he was snoring.

We went to bed, and Soraya fell asleep with her head on my chest. In the
darkness of our room, 1 lay awake, an insomniac once more. Awake. And alone
with demons of my own. Sometime in the middle of the night, I slid out of bed
and went to Sohrab's room. I stood over him, looking down, and saw something
protruding from under his pillow. I picked it up. Saw it was Rahim Khan's
Polaroid, the one I had given to Sohrab the night we had sat by the Shah Faisal
Mosque. The one of Hassan and Sohrab standing side by side, squinting in the
light of the sun, and smiling like the world was a good and just place. I wondered
how long Sohrab had lain in bed staring at the photo, turning it in his hands.

I looked at the photo. Your father was a man torn between two halves,
Rahim Khan had said in his letter. I had been the entitled half, the society-
approved, legitimate half, the unwitting embodiment of Baba's guilt. I looked at
Hassan, showing those two missing front teeth, sunlight slanting on his face.
Baba's other half. The unentitled, unprivileged half. The half who had inherited
what had been pure and noble in Baba. The half that, maybe, in the most secret
recesses of his heart, Baba had thought of as his true son.

I slipped the picture back where I had found it. Then I realized something:
That last thought had brought no sting with it. Closing Sohrab's door, 1 wondered
if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with

pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the
middle of the night.

THE GENERAL AND KHALA JAMILA came over for dinner the following night.
Khala Jamila, her hair cut short and a darker shade of red than usual, handed
Soraya the plate of almond-topped maghout she had brought for dessert. She
saw Sohrab and beamed. "_Mashallah_!" Soraya jan told us how khoshteep you
were, but you are even more handsome in person, Sohrab jan." She handed him a
blue turtleneck sweater. "I knitted this for you," she said. "For next winter.
_Inshallah_, it will fit you."

Sohrab took the sweater from her.

"Hello, young man," was all the general said, leaning with both hands on
his cane, looking at Sohrab the way one might study a bizarre decorative item at
someone's house.

I answered, and answered again, Khala Jamila's questions about my
injuries—I'd asked Soraya to tell them I had been mugged-reassuring her that I
had no permanent damage, that the wires would come out in a few weeks so I'd
be able to eat her cooking again, that, yes, I would try rubbing rhubarb juice and
sugar on my scars to make them fade faster.

The general and I sat in the living room and sipped wine while Soraya and
her mother set the table. I told him about Kabul and the Taliban. He listened and
nodded, his cane on his lap, and tsk'ed when I told him of the man I had spotted
selling his artificial leg. I made no mention of the executions at Ghazi Stadium
and Assef. He asked about Rahim Khan, whom he said he had met in Kabul a few
times, and shook his head solemnly when I told him of Rahim Khan's illness. But
as we spoke, I caught his eyes drifting again and again to Sohrab sleeping on the
couch. As if we were skirting around the edge of what he really wanted to know.

The skirting finally came to an end over dinner when the general put
down his fork and said, "So, Amir jan, you're going to tell us why you have
brought back this boy with you?"

Iqbal jan! What sort of question is that?" Khala Jamila said.

"While you're busy knitting sweaters, my dear, I have to deal with the
community's perception of our family. People will ask. They will want to know
why there is a Hazara boy living with our daughter. What do I tell them?"

Soraya dropped her spoon. Turned on her father. "You can tell them--"

"It's okay, Soraya," I said, taking her hand. "It's okay. General Sahib is
quite right. People will ask."

"Amir-" she began.

"It's all right." I turned to the general. "You see, General Sahib, my father
slept with his servant's wife. She bore him a son named Hassan. Hassan is dead
now. That boy sleeping on the couch is Hassan's son. He's my nephew. That's
what you tell people when they ask."

They were all staring at me.

"And one more thing, General Sahib," I said. "You will never again refer to
him as 'Hazara boy' in my presence. He has a name and it's Sohrab."

No one said anything for the remainder of the meal.

IT WOULD BE ERRONEOUS to say Sohrab was quiet. Quiet is peace. Tranquillity.

Quiet is turning down the VOLUME knob on life.

Silence is pushing the OFF button. Shutting it down. All of it.

Sohrab's silence wasn't the self-imposed silence of those with convictions,
of protesters who seek to speak their cause by not speaking at all. It was the
silence of one who has taken cover in a dark place, curled up all the edges and
tucked them under.

He didn't so much live with us as occupy space. And precious little of it.
Sometimes, at the market, or in the park, I'd notice how other people hardly
seemed to even see him, like he wasn't there at all. I'd look up from a book and
realize Sohrab had entered the room, had sat across from me, and I hadn't
noticed. He walked like he was afraid to leave behind footprints. He moved as if
not to stir the air around him. Mostly, he slept.

Sohrab's silence was hard on Soraya too. Over that long-distance line to
Pakistan, Soraya had told me about the things she was planning for Sohrab.
Swimming classes. Soccer. Bowling league. Now she'd walk past Sohrab's room
and catch a glimpse of books sitting unopened in the wicker basket, the growth
chart unmarked, the jigsaw puzzle unassembled, each item a reminder of a life
that could have been. A reminder of a dream that was wilting even as it was
budding. But she hadn't been alone. I'd had my own dreams for Sohrab.

While Sohrab was silent, the world was not. One Tuesday morning last
September, the Twin Towers came crumbling down and, overnight, the world
changed. The American flag suddenly appeared everywhere, on the antennae of
yellow cabs weaving around traffic, on the lapels of pedestrians walking the
sidewalks in a steady stream, even on the grimy caps of San Francisco's pan
handlers sitting beneath the awnings of small art galleries and open-fronted
shops. One day I passed Edith, the homeless woman who plays the accordion
every day on the corner of Sutter and Stockton, and spotted an American flag
sticker on the accordion case at her feet.

Soon after the attacks, America bombed Afghanistan, the Northern
Alliance moved in, and the Taliban scurried like rats into the caves. Suddenly,
people were standing in grocery store lines and talking about the cities of my
childhood, Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif. When I was very little, Baba took
Hassan and me to Kunduz. I don't remember much about the trip, except sitting
in the shade of an acacia tree with Baba and Hassan, taking turns sipping fresh
watermelon juice from a clay pot and seeing who could spit the seeds farther.
Now Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and people sipping lattes at Starbucks were
talking about the battle for Kunduz, the Taliban's last stronghold in the north.
That December, Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras gathered in Bonn and,
under the watchful eye of the UN, began the process that might someday end

over twenty years of unhappiness in their watan. Hamid Karzai's caracul hat and
green chapan became famous.

Sohrab sleepwalked through it all.

Soraya and I became involved in Afghan projects, as much out of a sense
of civil duty as the need for something--anything--to fill the silence upstairs, the
silence that sucked everything in like a black hole. I had never been the active
type before, but when a man named Kabir, a former Afghan ambassador to Sofia,
called and asked if I wanted to help him with a hospital project, I said yes. The
small hospital had stood near the Afghan-Pakistani border and had a small
surgical unit that treated Afghan refugees with land mine injuries. But it had
closed down due to a lack of funds. I became the project manager, Soraya my co¬
manager. I spent most of my days in the study, e-mailing people around the
world, applying for grants, organizing fund-raising events. And telling myself
that bringing Sohrab here had been the right thing to do.

The year ended with Soraya and me on the couch, blanket spread over our
legs, watching Dick Clark on TV. People cheered and kissed when the silver ball
dropped, and confetti whitened the screen. In our house, the new year began
much the same way the last one had ended. In silence.

THEN, FOUR DAYS AGO, on a cool rainy day in March 2002, a small, wondrous
thing happened.

I took Soraya, Khala Jamila, and Sohrab to a gathering of Afghans at Lake
Elizabeth Park in Fremont. The general had finally been summoned to
Afghanistan the month before for a ministry position, and had flown there two
weeks earlier-he had left behind his gray suit and pocket watch. The plan was
for Khala Jamila to join him in a few months once he had settled. She missed him
terribly-and worried about his health there-and we had insisted she stay with
us for a while.

The previous Thursday, the first day of spring, had been the Afghan New
Year's Day-the Sawl-e-Nau-and Afghans in the Bay Area had planned
celebrations throughout the East Bay and the peninsula. Kabir, Soraya, and I had
an additional reason to rejoice: Our little hospital in Rawalpindi had opened the

week before, not the surgical unit, just the pediatric clinic. But it was a good start,
we all agreed.

It had been sunny for days, but Sunday morning, as I swung my legs out of
bed, I heard raindrops pelting the window. Afghan luck, I thought. Snickered. I
prayed morning _namaz_ while Soraya slept--I didn't have to consult the prayer
pamphlet I had obtained from the mosque anymore; the verses came naturally
now, effortlessly.

We arrived around noon and found a handful of people taking cover
under a large rectangular plastic sheet mounted on six poles spiked to the
ground. Someone was already frying bolani; steam rose from teacups and a pot
of cauliflower aush. A scratchy old Ahmad Zahir song was blaring from a cassette
player. I smiled a little as the four of us rushed across the soggy grass field,
Soraya and I in the lead, Khala Jamila in the middle, Sohrab behind us, the hood
of his yellow raincoat bouncing on his back.

"What's so funny?" Soraya said, holding a folded newspaper over her

head.

"You can take Afghans out of Paghman, but you can't take Paghman out of
Afghans," I said.

We stooped under the makeshift tent. Soraya and Khala Jamila drifted
toward an overweight woman frying spinach bolani. Sohrab stayed under the
canopy for a moment, then stepped back out into the rain, hands stuffed in the
pockets of his raincoat, his hair--now brown and straight like Hassan's-
plastered against his scalp. He stopped near a coffee-colored puddle and stared
at it. No one seemed to notice. No one called him back in. With time, the queries
about our adopted-and decidedly eccentric-little boy had mercifully ceased,
and, considering how tactless Afghan queries can be sometimes, that was a
considerable relief. People stopped asking why he never spoke. Why he didn't
play with the other kids. And best of all, they stopped suffocating us with their
exaggerated empathy, their slow head shaking, their tsk tsks, their "Oh gung
bichara." Oh, poor little mute one. The novelty had worn off. Like dull wallpaper,
Sohrab had blended into the background.

I shook hands with Kabir, a small, silver-haired man. He introduced me to
a dozen men, one of them a retired teacher, another an engineer, a former
architect, a surgeon who was now running a hot dog stand in Hayward. They all
said they'd known Baba in Kabul, and they spoke about him respectfully. In one

way or another, he had touched all their lives. The men said I was lucky to have
had such a great man for a father.

We chatted about the difficult and maybe thankless job Karzai had in
front of him, about the upcoming Loya jirga, and the king's imminent return to
his homeland after twenty-eight years of exile. I remembered the night in 1973,
the night Zahir Shah's cousin overthrew him; I remembered gunfire and the sky
lighting up silver-Ali had taken me and Hassan in his arms, told us not to be
afraid, that they were just shooting ducks.

Then someone told a Mullah Nasruddin joke and we were all laughing.
"You know, your father was a funny man too," Kabir said.

"He was, wasn't he?" I said, smiling, remembering how, soon after we
arrived in the U.S., Baba started grumbling about American flies. He'd sit at the
kitchen table with his flyswatter, watch the flies darting from wall to wall,
buzzing here, buzzing there, harried and rushed. "In this country, even flies are
pressed for time," he'd groan. How I had laughed. I smiled at the memory now.

By three o'clock, the rain had stopped and the sky was a curdled gray
burdened with lumps of clouds. A cool breeze blew through the park. More
families turned up. Afghans greeted each other, hugged, kissed, exchanged food.
Someone lighted coal in a barbecue and soon the smell of garlic and morgh
kabob flooded my senses. There was music, some new singer I didn't know, and
the giggling of children. I saw Sohrab, still in his yellow raincoat, leaning against
a garbage pail, staring across the park at the empty batting cage.

A little while later, as I was chatting with the former surgeon, who told me
he and Baba had been classmates in eighth grade, Soraya pulled on my sleeve.
"Amir, look!"

She was pointing to the sky. A half-dozen kites were flying high, speckles
of bright yellow, red, and green against the gray sky.

"Check it out," Soraya said, and this time she was pointing to a guy selling
kites from a stand nearby.

"Hold this," I said. I gave my cup of tea to Soraya. 1 excused myself and
walked over to the kite stand, my shoes squishing on the wet grass. I pointed to a
yellow seh-parcha. "Sawl-e-Nau mubabrak," the kite seller said, taking the
twenty and handing me the kite and a wooden spool of glass tar. I thanked him
and wished him a Happy New Year too. I tested the string the way Hassan and I
used to, by holding it between my thumb and forefinger and pulling it. It
reddened with blood and the kite seller smiled. I smiled back.

I took the kite to where Sohrab was standing, still leaning against the
garbage pail, arms crossed on his chest. He was looking up at the sky.

"Do you like the seh-parcha?" I said, holding up the kite by the ends of the
cross bars. His eyes shifted from the sky to me, to the kite, then back. A few
rivulets of rain trickled from his hair, down his face.

"I read once that, in Malaysia, they use kites to catch fish," I said. "I'll bet
you didn't know that. They tie a fishing line to it and fly it beyond the shallow
waters, so it doesn't cast a shadow and scare the fish. And in ancient China,
generals used to fly kites over battlefields to send messages to their men. It's
true. I'm not slipping you a trick." I showed him my bloody thumb. "Nothing
wrong with the tar either."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Soraya watching us from the tent.
Hands tensely dug in her armpits. Unlike me, she'd gradually abandoned her
attempts at engaging him. The unanswered questions, the blank stares, the
silence, it was all too painful. She had shifted to "Holding Pattern," waiting for a
green light from Sohrab. Waiting.

I wet my index finger and held it up. "I remember the way your father
checked the wind was to kick up dust with his sandal, see which way the wind
blew it. He knew a lot of little tricks like that," I said. Lowered my finger. "West, I
think."

Sohrab wiped a raindrop from his earlobe and shifted on his feet. Said
nothing. I thought of Soraya asking me a few months ago what his voice sounded
like. I'd told her I didn't remember anymore.

"Did I ever tell you your father was the best kite runner in Wazir Akbar
Khan? Maybe all of Kabul?" I said, knotting the loose end of the spool tar to the
string loop tied to the center spar. "How jealous he made the neighborhood kids.

He'd run kites and never look up at the sky, and people used to say he was
chasing the kite's shadow. But they didn't know him like I did. Your father wasn't
chasing any shadows. He just... knew" Another half-dozen kites had taken flight.
People had started to gather in clumps, teacups in hand, eyes glued to the sky.

"Do you want to help me fly this?" I said.

Sohrab's gaze bounced from the kite to me. Back to the sky.

"Okay." I shrugged. "Looks like I'll have to fly it tanhaii." Solo.

I balanced the spool in my left hand and fed about three feet of tar. The
yellow kite dangled at the end of it, just above the wet grass. "Last chance," I said.
But Sohrab was looking at a pair of kites tangling high above the trees.

"All right. Here I go." I took off running, my sneakers splashing rainwater
from puddles, the hand clutching the kite end of the string held high above my
head. It had been so long, so many years since I'd done this, and I wondered if I'd
make a spectacle of myself. I let the spool roll in my left hand as I ran, felt the
string cut my right hand again as it fed through. The kite was lifting behind my
shoulder now, lifting, wheeling, and I ran harder. The spool spun faster and the
glass string tore another gash in my right palm. I stopped and turned. Looked up.
Smiled. High above, my kite was tilting side to side like a pendulum, making that
old paper-bird-flapping-its-wings sound I always associated with winter
mornings in Kabul. I hadn't flown a kite in a quarter of a century, but suddenly I
was twelve again and all the old instincts came rushing back.

I felt a presence next to me and looked down. It was Sohrab. Hands dug
deep in the pockets of his raincoat. He had followed me.

"Do you want to try?" I asked. He said nothing. But when I held the string
out for him, his hand lifted from his pocket. Hesitated. Took the string. My heart
quickened as I spun the spool to gather the loose string. We stood quietly side by
side. Necks bent up.

Around us, kids chased each other, slid on the grass. Someone was playing
an old Hindi movie soundtrack now. A line of elderly men were praying
afternoon _namaz_ on a plastic sheet spread on the ground. The air smelled of
wet grass, smoke, and grilled meat. I wished time would stand still.

Then I saw we had company. A green kite was closing in. I traced the
string to a kid standing about thirty yards from us. He had a crew cut and a T-
shirt that read THE ROCK RULES in bold block letters. He saw me looking at him
and smiled. Waved. I waved back.

Sohrab was handing the string back to me.

"Are you sure?" I said, taking it.

He took the spool from me.

"Okay," I said. "Let's give him a sabagh, teach him a lesson, nay?" I glanced
over at him. The glassy, vacant look in his eyes was gone. His gaze flitted
between our kite and the green one. His face was a little flushed, his eyes
suddenly alert. Awake. Alive. 1 wondered when I had forgotten that, despite
everything, he was still just a child.

The green kite was making its move. "Let's wait," I said. "We'll let him get
a little closer." It dipped twice and crept toward us. "Come on. Come to me," I
said.

The green kite drew closer yet, now rising a little above us, unaware of
the trap I'd set for it. "Watch, Sohrab. I'm going to show you one of your father's
favorite tricks, the old lift-and-dive."

Next to me, Sohrab was breathing rapidly through his nose. The spool
rolled in his palms, the tendons in his scarred wrists like rubab strings. Then 1
blinked and, for just a moment, the hands holding the spool were the chipped-
nailed, calloused hands of a harelipped boy. 1 heard a crow cawing somewhere
and I looked up. The park shimmered with snow so fresh, so dazzling white, it
burned my eyes. It sprinkled soundlessly from the branches of white-clad trees. I

smelled turnip qurina now. Dried mulberries. Sour oranges. Sawdust and
walnuts. The muffled quiet, snow-quiet, was deafening. Then far away, across the
stillness, a voice calling us home, the voice of a man who dragged his right leg.

The green kite hovered directly above us now. "He's going for it. Anytime
now," I said, my eyes flicking from Sohrab to our kite.

The green kite hesitated. Held position. Then shot down. "Here he comes!"

I said.

I did it perfectly. After all these years. The old lift-and-dive trap. I
loosened my grip and tugged on the string, dipping and dodging the green kite. A
series of quick sidearm jerks and our kite shot up counterclockwise, in a half
circle. Suddenly I was on top. The green kite was scrambling now, panic-stricken.
But it was too late. I'd already slipped him Hassan's trick. I pulled hard and our
kite plummeted. I could almost feel our string sawing his. Almost heard the snap.

Then, just like that, the green kite was spinning and wheeling out of
control.

Behind us, people cheered. Whistles and applause broke out. I was
panting. The last time I had felt a rush like this was that day in the winter of
1975, just after I had cut the last kite, when I spotted Baba on our rooftop,
clapping, beaming.

I looked down at Sohrab. One corner of his mouth had curled up just so.

A smile.

Lopsided.

Hardly there.

But there.

Behind us, kids were scampering, and a melee of screaming kite runners
was chasing the loose kite drifting high above the trees. I blinked and the smile
was gone. But it had been there. I had seen it.

"Do you want me to run that kite for you?"

His Adam's apple rose and fell as he swallowed. The wind lifted his hair. I
thought I saw him nod.

"For you, a thousand times over," I heard myself say.

Then I turned and ran.

It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn't make everything all right. It
didn't make anything all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods,
shaking in the wake of a startled bird's flight.

But I'll take it. With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts the
snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting.

1 ran. A grown man running with a swarm of screaming children. But I
didn't care. I ran with the wind blowing in my face, and a smile as wide as the
Valley of Panjsher on my lips.

I ran.

The End

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

I am indebted to the following colleagues for their advice, assistance, or support:
Dr. Alfred Lerner, Don Vakis, Robin Heck, Dr. Todd Dray, Dr. Robert Tull, and Dr.
Sandy Chun. Thanks also to Lynette Parker of East San Jose Community Law
Center for her advice about adoption procedures, and to Mr. Daoud Wahab for
sharing his experiences in Afghanistan with me. I am grateful to my dear friend
Tamim Ansary for his guidance and support and to the gang at the San Francisco
Writers Workshop for their feed back and encouragement. I want to thank my
father, my oldest friend and the inspiration for all that is noble in Baba; my
mother who prayed for me and did nazr at every stage of this book's writing; my
aunt for buying me books when I was young. Thanks go out to Ali, Sandy, Daoud,
Walid, Raya, Shalla, Zahra, Rob, and Kader for reading my stories. I want to thank
Dr. and Mrs. Kayoumy--my other parents--for their warmth and unwavering
support.

I must thank my agent and friend, Elaine Koster, for her wisdom, patience,
and gracious ways, as well as Cindy Spiegel, my keen-eyed and judicious editor
who helped me unlock so many doors in this tale. And I would like to thank
Susan Petersen Kennedy for taking a chance on this book and the hardworking
staff at Riverhead for laboring over it.

Last, I don't know how to thank my lovely wife, Roya-to whose opinion I
am addicted-for her kindness and grace, and for reading, re-reading, and
helping me edit every single draft of this novel. For your patience and
understanding, I will always love you, Roya jan.

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